Fire Phoenix

【China Story】

Author: Gao Kai (Vice Chairman of Gansu Writers Association, Dean of Gansu Provincial College of Literature)

Meridian Ridge, known as Bridge Mountain in ancient times, is named after the north-south direction of the mountain range. It spans Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, is located in the hinterland of the Loess Plateau, and is an important ecological public welfare forest in the central part of the Loess Plateau.

In order to create a long documentary literature of ecological civilization, I walked into the Meridian Ridge Forest, and thus approached a special "green guard group" - firefighters and rangers.

Illustration: Guo Hongsong

Lighting fire is harder than fighting

"It's harder to fight than to fight!" Liang Shengcai, who has fought all his life, has a basis for saying that the fire is fighting. The nine-day and nine-night fire battle that he just experienced in Ganquan County, Shaanxi Province, made the 94-year-old Liang Shengcai deeply understand.

One summer, in a quiet courtyard of the Laoshan Forestry Bureau's Old Family Hospital in Ganquan County, I visited the oldest forester in Meridian Ridge, Liang Shengcai, 94 years old. After opening the "talk box", Elder Liang's proudest sentence was: "I have fought all my life and have never been injured." "It was a miracle, as if the bullets in the rain of bullets had flown away from him. Liang Shengcai was a native of Dingxiang County, Shanxi, who fought from his hometown in Shanxi to Sichuan, from Sichuan to North Korea, and then returned to Anhui to continue to serve as a soldier. In 1957, he transferred to the Ganquan Qingquan Forest Management Institute and worked until the deputy director of the Laoshan Forestry Bureau retired. As if to prove something, he immediately brought out a large stack of honor certificates, the latest of which was the commemorative medal of "the 70th Anniversary of the Chinese Volunteer Army's War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea." Elder Liang already had a great-grandson, four generations in the same hall, living a god-like life. A crutch, a small horse, go out shopping, watch chess, play poker for a while, go home and then look at the TV, insist on taking a lunch break every day. He doesn't smoke and only drinks a little wine. Go to bed at 8 o'clock every night, get up at 5 o'clock the next day, and start a new day. This is true in spring, summer, autumn and winter. In order to verify the memory of a 94-year-old person again, I asked him how to write the Xiang character in Dingxiang County, and he replied clearly and fluently: "One point, one horizontal, two mouths, two horizontal, two vertical, one horizontal..." The next stroke he did not seem to be able to say, he used his hand in the air to draw a few times very accurately. It seems that he not only clearly remembers his own life experience, but also remembers the strokes and paintings of his hometown Dingxiang. How beautiful it is for a person to live peacefully in the green mountains and rivers.

From fighting wars to forestry, Elder Liang said the phrase "fighting fire is harder than fighting a war." In October of the year he first came to the forest farm, because of the drought, there was a forest fire in Baijiapan, the fire was so high that it burned for nine days and nine nights, and he followed everyone to fight for nine days and nine nights. In that fire, more than three hundred acres of woods were destroyed.

I fully believe in the experience of a veteran who "it is harder to fight than to fight". When I arrived at the Fuxian Qiaobei Forest Farm, on a rainy day, I took the time to interview Wu Shengli, deputy captain of the Qiaobei Forest Fire Brigade, in a dumpling noodle restaurant. Wu Shengli, 48, a firefighter, transferred from the Chengdu Fire Brigade to Fuxian in 1994. Wu Shengli said that people all know that dry fire fighting is bitter, but they do not know that dry forest fire fighting is more bitter and more dangerous. In peacetime, the team implements militarized management, not only 24-hour duty, but also training troops and patrolling police. Others can accompany the mother-in-law and the doll every day, the firefighter has 300 days a year 365 days a year can not accompany the mother-in-law doll, the mother-in-law often complains, the doll seems to have no father like him. Firefighters are looking forward to rain and snow, because on this day, there will be no fire alarm, and they can go home to accompany the mother-in-law and dolls. Wu Shengli paused for a moment and said, just now, the mother-in-law also called him and asked him, it is raining in the sky, why don't you come back? When he spoke, Wu Shengli's tears were about to flow out. I never regret being a firefighter in this life, that is false, and sometimes I really think that I will not be a firefighter in the next life. Wu Shengli's voice was a little choked. Wiping the corners of his eyes, he continued, but the fire was like a mountain, and once it was on fire, everything was forgotten. Forest firefighters need to cross mountains, climb mountains, cut thorns, and go to the soup to fight the fire. When I arrived at the scene, I saw the burning forest, my heart was bleeding, and I was eager to fly over and put out the fire. Entering the fire field, don't say that the raging flames, smoke can choke people to death, eyes can not be opened, a handful of snot and a handful of tears, to kill people.

I hadn't asked a question, didn't want to interrupt him, and listened to him continue. Upon receiving the order, the firefighters must depart within 10 minutes, and by the last second of the 10 minutes, they must complete the following preparations: dress, carry fire extinguishing equipment, including wind extinguishers, water separation fire extinguishers, fire extinguishers, fire extinguishers, tents, backpacks (containing machetes, shovels, lifelines, walkie-talkies, telescopes and GPS locators), chain saws, cutters, and of course, the necessary dry food and water. The fire alarm is received by the fire command through the fire alarm telephone 12119, and then quickly issues an order to clarify the location of the fire. The command, like the fire brigade, is on duty 24 hours a day. The fire brigade of the North Bridge Forestry Bureau has 26 firefighters, and every time they set out, in addition to 6 administrative personnel, the remaining 20 members can not be less. Our experience is to "fight early, play small, hit" until the fire is beaten to death.

There are two of the most memorable firefights in Wu Shengli. One was a fire in a local forest farm in Jiyi Town, Yichuan at the end of 2015. It was 1 o'clock in the middle of the night when they received the fire alarm, and 20 soldiers set off quickly, but due to the poor condition of the road in the forest area, they arrived in three hours, and when they arrived at the scene, they could not go up the mountain, the fire truck could not pass, and the soldiers had to walk up the mountain with heavy equipment. It is well known that it is difficult to walk in forest areas. There was no road, and the warriors cut branches as they walked, cut a road with thorns and thorns, sweating like rain, their steps were difficult, and their hearts were burning. Another battle was a forest fire in the Huangling Qiaoshan Forest Farm in mid-May 1997. 20 firefighters traveled more than 100 kilometers, and the road drove for more than two hours. Upon arrival at the scene and involved in the formulation of the firefighting opinions, they immediately threw themselves into battle. Their strategy is "divide and contain, safe fire", that is, from the two wings to fight, from the tail of the fire into the fire field, because from the head of the fire is too dangerous, the effect is not great. In the forest area of northern Shaanxi in May, the weather is still very cold, seven days and seven nights, the front is roasted, the back is cold; it cannot be eaten and drunk, even if it is eaten and drunk, it is half raw and half cooked. At that time, there were no tents, and everyone was resting in the open air.

This is how fire prevention is prevented

Man is tinder. As long as there are people, fires are inevitable.

The forest history of Meridian Ridge is a history of fire prevention. Some people say that the Lin generation is planted with trees, the second generation of the forest is seedlings, and the third generation of the forest is forest ranger. In fact, three generations of Meridian Ridge people are all forest protection and fire prevention, but the forest generation is planting trees while guarding the forest fire, the second generation of the forest is in the nursery while protecting the forest fire, and the third generation of the forest is mainly guarding the forest fire. Fire has always been a top priority in all forest disasters. Fire is divided into four levels: general fire, large fire, major fire, and heavy fire. Generally speaking, the duty of the ranger is to prevent the fire before the fire, and the duty of the firefighter is to prevent the fire after the fire alarm, but the ranger fire prevention is not only the matter of the ranger and the firefighter, but also closely related to everyone inside and outside the forest.

In the woods, everyone can be a spark. In areas where agriculture and forestry are mixed, there are the most fire hazards. When interviewing at the fork in the forest farm, I heard that last year in a certain forest farm, an old man set fire to corn stalks on the edge of the ground and burned hundreds of acres of oil pine forest, which made people feel painful. I also heard that a few years ago, a cadre went to the grave to burn paper, which triggered a small fire and was dismissed on the spot by the "iron-faced county magistrate". That's how fires come about at Meridian Ridge, and that's how fire prevention is prevented.

The forest fire prevention period is from October 1 to the end of May of the following year. In the meantime, household propaganda, clearing the mountains and charing, thunder and lightning can not move. Because of cultural inheritance, it is impossible to prohibit the burning of paper to worship ancestors in a short period of time, and it is heavily guarded during the Qingming Festival, Zhongyuan Festival and Spring Festival. As I learned in the Taibai Forest place, over the years, no forest farm workers have burned paper for their ancestors, and every year during the Qingming and Spring Festival, the workers are guarding the mountains to watch others burn paper for their ancestors. Each family burns paper differently, and each grave is burned more than once. The ranger has a phone number to go to the grave, contact in advance, ask when to go, and then make an appointment to go at the same time. There is a two-dimensional code at the intersection that must be passed, and it must be scanned in and out, and those who go in but do not come out must track and inquire about the whereabouts. Those who go to the cemetery to burn paper are also on guard, but those who burn paper sporadically because the cemetery is scattered are invincible, and the rangers must stay next to the cemetery and watch the people burn the paper and destroy the paper before they can leave.

Tian Yucheng, the head of the chessboard forest farm, remembers very clearly, in Chinese New Year's Eve 2016, a farmer in Jiaozhai Village burned paper on the grave and caused a fire, fortunately, the forest farm workers and villagers joined hands to extinguish it in time, but they were afraid of the "resurgence" of the underground fire, they let the villagers go home for the New Year, the 150 employees of the forest farm stayed behind to continue to squat at the fire site, and after a collective "fire-keeping Chinese New Year's Eve" on the mountain, they went down the mountain one after another in the first, second and third grades. Forest fires include canopy fires, surface fires and underground fires. Underground fire, also known as dark fire, is generated by rotten leaves, whether it is on fire and whether it is extinguished, it is impossible to see. Affected and trained by the forest farm, the vast majority of farmers in the forest area still have a relatively strong sense of fire prevention, and they are always full of apologies for the fire caused by the negligence of some people, and the forest farm staff help them extinguish the fire related to them, which makes them grateful. So, that evening, the farmer brought cotton coats, and the next morning he brought hot buns in buckets.

Indeed, lighting fires cannot be separated from the masses, and lighting fires requires people. Burning paper on the grave and burning straw in farmland are the biggest fire hazards in the areas where agriculture and forestry are staggered, and this must be prevented by the joint efforts of foresters and the surrounding masses. In March 2019, a farmer burned straw and caused a fire, endangering the Yunmeng Mountain Scenic Area, the forest farm was not manpowered enough, and more than 90 people were transferred from the surrounding villages and society in time, extinguishing the fire in one go, defending the defensive line, and preserving the Yunmeng Mountain. At present, farmers cannot completely eliminate straw burning. If the straw cannot be burned once every few years, it is prone to diseases and insect pests, and the traditional "slash-and-burn" has a certain reason. In 2018, there was a local insect infestation, and a black insect swept in, specializing in corn beard, which caused great harm to the growth of corn. In recent years, corn stalks have been harvested by large machinery and then compressed and packaged, but some small areas of corn fields that do not use large machinery still need to be burned after harvesting the straw left by corn cobs.

Tian Yucheng made me grow a lot of insights. He also said that "fire prevention is not combustible" is the most successful fire protection realm. In November 2018, the weather in the forest area was already very cold, and in order to test the fire prevention preparation of the forest farm, a county leader suddenly called the fire prevention telephone of the forest farm office at 11 p.m., saying that there was a fire in a certain place and ordered them to immediately set off to fight it. Of course, he believed it, put down the phone and quickly took 7 people, and after rushing to the "scene" 10 kilometers away in 13 minutes, he found that it was a test and a false alarm.

False alarm is not afraid, the most feared is "real shock".

"Black smoke is burning straw, white smoke is the first mountain fire, if you find a fire alarm, you must first report to the field department." On the high-rise observation deck watchtower in Tai'an, ranger Ye Junying handed me the telescope. The scene in front of me was the same as what I had seen in several watchtowers before, with a canopy of trees stacked in the near distance, a vast forest sea in the distance, and a quiet and quiet place near and far. "Here you can see the movement of the three forest farms of Kuquan, Yangwan and Diaoping, which are 10 kilometers in a straight line," he added, adding that "in the past 20 years, only fire alarms have been found, and no fires have occurred."

Lao Ye is 59 years old and will retire immediately, which seems a bit reluctant. His wife, Qin Shuyun, was also on the lookout, and after retiring the year before, he was left alone. Both husband and wife are "second generation lin", who previously worked in other forest farms and stayed together for 20 years after gathering on this mountain. Lao Ye was very satisfied, and his greatest sense of accomplishment was that he could work smoothly. Usually, he goes to bed after 11 o'clock every night, gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning, the first thing is to go upstairs to look at it, and then go downstairs to make a fire to cook; after eating, he goes upstairs to look at it every two hours; before falling asleep at night, he must go upstairs to look around again, otherwise he will not sleep steadily. Entering the fire prevention period, he took a bag of instant noodles every day, carried a pot of water, guarded the roof of the building, condescending, like a "forest commander", constantly holding up a telescope to look, and when he found the fire alarm, he gave orders. After a long time, the sound of the village a mile away and the movement on the road three hundred meters away, he could hear the reason. Lao Ye's lookout is a small three-story building, and the top of the building is his watchtower, with a total of 1540 square meters up and down. Inside the courtyard wall on the first floor is Lao Ye's living area, four rooms, he lives in one, the other is a warehouse, with fire prevention tools. After his wife left, the only ones who could accompany him were two dogs, one larger on a leash, and the other small, free to roam the yard.

There's also a litter of magpies. When they first arrived at the lookout, Lao Ye and his wife planted three eucommia trees in the yard, which were only thick at that time, one and a half tall, and now they are seventeen or eight centimeters thick and twelve or thirteen meters high, and there is a magpie nest on it, and there are 6 magpies living there. Three trees are forested, and three eucommia trees are already lined with trees. Eucommia trees are deciduous trees, the bark is gray-brown, relatively rough, contains rubber, broken and pulled apart many gelatinous filaments; up to 20 meters long, chest diameter up to 50 cm. Eucommia tree is a precious tree species endemic to China. Meridian Ridge is not native to eucommia trees, but has been widely cultivated.

Magpie Annunciation. Ye Junying and Qin Shuyun, who had completed their merits, accidentally left a family of magpies on the mountain, chirping and guarding their eucommia trees.

The Fire Phoenix is not a legend

There are also people who are born in the fire field. When interviewing some "old forests" in some forest farms at the Qingyang Forestry and Grassland Bureau, I met Wu Xiaoting, a "second generation of forests" who is not old. She told me that she had written a 260,000-word report on forestry called Green Soul and was contacting the publisher. After adding WeChat to each other for a long time, she sent some fragments of her works.

The story Wu Xiaoting told took place in the year I was born. On December 30, 1963, in Potou Village, where the three classes of LuoshanFu Farm are located, a farmer burned paper at the ancestors and accidentally ignited the dry grass on the grave, and the wind blew and the wind fought, thus triggering a forest fire. At that time, there was no forest firefighting, and large and small fires were fought by human beings. The farm workers, the members of the production team, men, women, young and old, went out together. Among the crowd of people who lit the fire, there was a couple of farm workers, the male named Wu Zhuyu, who was a clerk in the field, a secondary school graduate of The Shaanxi Chang'an Engineering School Xuelin; the female named Zhai Huizhi, was the head of the tailoring team of the forest processing factory. The fire scene was a sea of fire, fire snakes were flying everywhere, and fire dragons were flying in the sky. There was no water near the fire, so everyone poured soil, and when they couldn't dig up the soil on the frozen ground, they beat it with an iron shovel, and hit Mars everywhere. Because there is no experience in lighting fires, everyone will fight when they see fire, regardless of the head of the fire, chaos. At first, everyone only cared about lighting the fire, and no one noticed anyone else, until Zhai Huizhi, who was on the fire, suddenly fell to the ground, and only then did someone shout in shock: "Come on, come on, there is something wrong with Zhai Squad Leader!" Wu Zhuyu was even more shocked, how his wife, who was already seven or eight months pregnant, had come! He immediately ran over and picked up his fallen wife, only to see that one of her faces was blackened by the smoke and fire, and there was no human appearance, and the whole person was unconscious. Wu Zhuyu always hugged his wife tightly, did not dare to shake hard, just shouted with everyone, until he woke his wife up. Zhai Huizhi, who opened his eyes, his first reaction was to touch his lower body with his hand, only to hear her wow: "My baby!" At this time, Wu Zhuyu saw a fleshy fetus flowing out of his wife's body.

Fortunately, after the rescue of Zhou Dunfan, the only doctor on the farm, the girl who weighed only 3 pounds and the placenta was not yet mature magically survived. Surprised, from the moment she opened her eyes, everyone called her "Fire Phoenix"—the Fire Phoenix, the name given by a great fire that bore a striking resemblance to an ancient legend between heaven and earth.

The fragment of the work ends abruptly here. This is just the legendary birth of the fire phoenix, what about the next fire phoenix? Because of the epidemic barrier, considering that it is impossible to interview Wu Xiaoting face-to-face in a short period of time, I chatted with her in WeChat. It was late at night, because the network flew over time and space, and the distance between us, when I think of it, is far away, looks very close, and looks like we are in front of each other.

The weak and small premature baby Huo Feng has received extra protection and care from her parents. In the years before and after learning to walk, the fire phoenix was always on the shoulder of his father. Since then, Mom and Dad have told her the story of Meridian Ridge, people, animals, plants, many stories. In 1980, Huo Feng, who graduated from high school, happened to meet the farm recruitment, passed the exam and became a "second generation of forest", learning to cultivate saplings and fruit trees with his father all day long. Every year in the winter free season, she will also be dispatched by the unit to patrol the fire risk and publicize the fire prevention of the forest. Later, Huo Feng left the farm, but her heart has always been in Meridian Ridge, and she will not forget the doctors who delivered her, Uncle Zhou Dunfan and Aunt Han Xiuying, and will not forget her birthplace, LuoshanFu Farm.

Talking about this late at night, Wu Xiaoting, who was thousands of miles away, suddenly stopped, and then said that the fire phoenix was her, she was the fire phoenix, and the fire phoenix was her nickname.

"I wrote "Green Soul" to express my gratitude to Meridian Ridge and forestry. The work is not only about my family, there are more than 50 rangers with names and surnames. 'Green Soul' wants to express the entrepreneurial spirit of forestry people, and does not hesitate to dedicate youth, sweat and even life to protect the selfless spirit of trees, which represents the dream of forestry people, green dreams and ecological dreams. In order to complete this work, she spent a full 4 years, one year deep into Meridian Ridge interviews, checking materials, three years of writing, day and night.

Walk into the Meridian Ridge Great Forest, remember the name of the fire alarm "12119", and also remember the two major members of Meridian Ridge behind this name: firefighters and rangers.

Guangming Daily (2022.02.25. 14th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily