Source: People's Daily
Picture (1) shows Zhang Zhihao (left) and Aji painting the boundary marker in red during the Border Patrol.
Photo by Zhang Jia
Figure (2) shows the rescue of herders in distress.
Photo by Yao Yuchen
Picture (3) is a view of the village of Zheskamu.
Photo by Zhang Jia
Zhao Kairu drew
The Yarkand River meanders through the Karakoram, giving birth to sporadic villages deep in the gorge, and the village of Geskamu is one of them. Like the villages on the Pamir Plateau, Jeskram is vast and lonely. From Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County, another two hundred and twenty-one kilometers will be taken to the border. In an area of 8,400 square kilometers, there are fewer than 800 herders.
Before 2018, herders here moved between pastures with the alternating seasons. There is a "nest" on the border crossing, which is the Former Zeskamu Police Office, but it is empty most of the time, because all the police officers follow the herders. At the end of 2018, the new village of Jeszcam was built on the banks of the Yarkand River, and herders settled here one after another, so a new Jesskamu police office was established. It was also in this year that the Hongqiraf Border Police Station, which was subordinate to the Police Affairs Office, was transferred from the Public Security Border Defense Force to the National Immigration Administration, the task of fighting borders changed from "a period of time" in active service to "a lifetime", and the police changed from "flowing soldiers" to "permanent residents" like herders.
One
In 2019, the twenty-three-year-old police officer Aji entered the mountain for the first time. The police car departed from the valley between the Sarekol Ridge and the Karakoram and climbed to Yirak Sudaban, 5,000 meters above sea level. The road is full of layers of snow-capped mountains. More than one hundred and sixty kilometers away, walking for more than five hours.
Endless mountains, endless roads.
Aji grew up at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains in southern Aksu, Xinjiang, and was accustomed to seeing the snow-capped Gobi Mountains. Even so, he walked cautiously on The Path of Jessim. Those roads are suspended halfway up the mountainside, with a cliff on one side and a steep cliff on the other, walking on it, and watching out for avalanches and rockfalls.
Aji's comrade-in-arms Zhang Zhihao, who was the same age as him, had originally served in Qinhuangdao, and when the public security border defense force was reformed and transferred, he volunteered to come to Xinjiang. In Qinhuangdao, the sea cannot be seen at a glance, but here, the mountain hangs overhead at all times, which makes people panic. When Zhang Zhihao first entered the mountain and passed through YilakSudasaka, the top of the mountain suddenly avalanche, and the police car was lucky to escape, but the vehicles of several herders were buried by the avalanche. It took him and his comrades more than four hours to rescue the trapped vehicles and herders.
That day, when I arrived at the police office, it was already dark, and when I looked up, I was surrounded by black mountains, and the stars were hanging on the top of the mountain. "What's on that side of the mountain?" Zhang Zhihao was curious in his heart. But more than two years later, he never saw what "that side of the mountain" looked like.
Later, he learned that "the other side of the mountain is actually a mountain." This is a vast area that cannot be completely completed by human beings alone. The Kunlun Mountains, the Karakoram Mountains, the Sarekol Ridge and many other mountain ranges meet here, forming countless isolated areas on the plateau. In the jurisdiction of the Zescam Police Office, there are more than a dozen peaks above 4,000 meters above sea level alone, including Chogory Peak, the second highest peak in the world. The number of peaks at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters is innumerable.
During the Spring Festival of 2020, a heavy snow closed the only way into the mountain, and the power and network signals were also interrupted, and Zheskamu became an "island". At that time, there were only Zhang Zhihao and a few assistant police officers in the police office. They patrolled the village road in the glimmer of the stars. After returning, he sat under the national flag in front of the gate wrapped in a tight coat, looking at the starry sky and the dark mountains in the distance, listening to the mountain wind whistling by his ears, but his heart was very solid.
After the Spring Festival, after the road, electricity and communications were repaired, Zhang Zhihao could not wait to dial the video phone to his family. Seeing that the son who had been "missing" for many days was safe and sound, the mother on the other end of the video was in tears before she could open her mouth.
The barriers of the mountains sometimes make even the most advanced communications equipment ineffective. Once, a dangerous construction site in the depths of the Karakoram occurred, and the police searched and finally found the injured workers, but they did not expect that the vehicle was trapped in the glacier on the way back. It was already midnight and the satellite phone had lost its function. The temperature plummeted below zero, and the police gave the wounded the only warm cotton coat. After surviving until dawn, Aji sent people on foot to find a signal outside the mountain for help. Finally, in the early morning of the third day, he successfully withdrew to the outside of the mountain.
The daily Border Patrol is equally arduous. During a border raid that lasted five days and five nights, Aji and Zhang Zhihao led border guards to patrol the border during the day and camp on the spot at night. In the middle of the night, the wolves came to swim around the tent, and they lit a campfire urgently to scare the wolves away. To transport supplies, they found several donkeys who were the best at climbing mountains. Unexpectedly, when crossing the Agleda Ban at an altitude of 4,900 meters, looking at the abyss, the donkey was frightened and weak, and finally turned into a person pushing the donkey to the mountain.
Two
Every day at breakfast, the seventy-six-year-old herdsman Maimur Khan would come to the police office and visit the village with yao Yuchen, a police officer. An old man and a young man walked in the village, becoming a scenery in Zheskamu.
Twenty-four-year-old Yao Yuchen, from Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, is the only son in the family. Like Zhang Zhihao, he also volunteered to apply to come to Shubian in Xinjiang. From the southeast coast to the western frontier, the language barrier, different customs, how to quickly integrate into the life of herders, is the first problem he faces.
Yao Yuchen's trick is "intentions". He asked his ethnic minority comrades for advice on the pronunciation of the local dialect, and then wrote it down on the police manual and practiced it repeatedly. Gradually, his communication with the herders became smoother and smoother.
Yao Yuchen often carried a big white rabbit milk candy in his pocket, and when he saw the children when he visited, he grabbed one and gave it to them. Every time he drove to the pastoral area and saw a herdsman driving sheep on the side of the road, he slowed down the speed of the car from a distance and slowly passed, so as not to raise dust to choke them and to avoid frightening the sheep. Herders with limited mobility are also sent directly to their homes.
The villagers saw that Yao Yuchen was so attentive, they all regarded him as their own child. It was at this time that Mamur Khan began to take the initiative to accompany Yao Yuchen to visit and introduce him to local customs and folk customs, and Yao Yuchen told him stories outside the mountains.
According to Tajik customs, whenever the police come to visit, they always have to cook a pot of hot milk tea, and drinking the milk tea is the greatest respect for the owner. Zhang Zhihao and Yao Yuchen were not accustomed to drinking milk tea when they first arrived, so they drank it average, every family must drink two or three bowls.
Because it is far from the police station, it is inconvenient for the herdsmen to handle the household registration business, and when the police visit, they will carry the forms for handling identity cards and household registration books with them, fill them out and take them to the police station, and then bring them back after handling them. Every time they come back from vacation, the police will buy herders' favorite brick tea and rock sugar from Kashgar...
This bowl of milk tea and a small matter have made the feelings between the police and the local herders deeper and deeper. Herders spontaneously joined the border guarding team, a felt house is a post, a herder is a sentry, they build a copper wall to maintain the stability of the border.
The special geographical location makes many herders in Zheskram never go out of the mountains in their lives. The police room has become a link between the inside and outside of the mountain, young people have learned to shop online with the police, and the elderly have seen more of the world outside the mountain through the Internet.
At the beginning of 2021, the police used the camera to take photos of the elderly and children in the village, sent them to the outside of the mountain to rinse, and then entrusted someone to bring them back. After receiving the photos, many elderly people were moved to tears because this was the first photo of their lives.
Three
Although life in Shubian is very hard, these young police officers all believe that "it is meaningful to do what should be done." As for the hardships here, they never mention it to their families.
Zhang Zhihao had been in the police office for more than five consecutive months, from winter to spring, when he went down the mountain, the village of Zheskamu was still in a state of depression. When he came to Kashgar City, five hundred and sixty kilometers away, the streets were bustling with traffic and leafy, and he deliberately came to the ancient city of Kashgar, which was full of tourists, took a selfie and sent it to his mother, telling her that this was where he worked.
Whenever they talk about these experiences, their dark faces always have a sincere smile on them, as if all memories are "sweet". Even when it comes to a sad story, the low mood is hidden in the young smile, flashing by, almost difficult to detect.
In the course of experience, these young people grow up rapidly. After coming to the border, they grew up under the care of their families, and the first thing they learned was self-reliance. Nowadays, Zhang Zhihao is good at making Xinjiang strips, Aji is best at making lamb soup rice, and Yao Yuchen's large plate of chicken is a must. "Take care of yourself before you can work better," they say.
When I left Zeskamu, Yao Yuchen, Aji and Zhang Zhihao drove me down the mountain. The poor road conditions in the Karakoram Mountains made every "outsider" terrified, and these three young people were already familiar with this.
The car crossed a section of cliff and an open area appeared in front of it. Yao Yuchen had just stepped on the accelerator to prepare to accelerate, and the alarm sound of "beep" sounded in the car. When I got out of the car to see, the right rear tire was "pricking" the air leaking outward.
"Little things, don't worry." Yao Yuchen said as he opened the trunk, took out the jack, and climbed to the bottom of the car to find the chassis force point. Support, pole, lift, three or two strokes to put the car off the ground. Zhang Zhihao assisted from the side, removing screws, removing spare tires, and changing tires. The cooperation between the two is very tacit.
Here, cars have tires pierced an average of three times a month. "It's all small things, rest assured, easy to solve!" Yao Yuchen smiled and stressed again that there was a maturity in his expression and words that was not easy to see among his peers.
The cold wind swept through the valley and rolled up the grains of sand to hit the people. Yao Yuchen squinted his eyes, half-kneeling to twist the screws, and from time to time spit out the sand that had been blown into his mouth by the wind.
"Done!" After a while, Yao Yuchen got up and clapped his hands, and the dark blue police uniform was covered with dust. Aji and Zhang Zhihao stepped forward to help him pat his clothes, and he stood sideways to the downwind outlet to prevent the dust from drifting on his comrades.
The car continued to drive forward, leaving mountain after mountain behind. Looking at the layers of mountains, I suddenly thought that in the depths of this Karakoram, I don't know how many young people like Aji, Zhang Zhihao, and Yao Yuchen are silently shining and dedicating their youth in this remote and bitter cold land...