Han Yaoxian
I enlisted in the army at the end of 1972 from Shuibo Liangshan, which is "the essence of heaven and earth, and the beauty of the human environment".
I distinctly remember that the winter of that year was not too cold. More than 1,000 of us "heroes of Liangshan" sat on the Jiefang brand car without a canopy, facing the bitter cold wind, singing the majestic song "I joined the People's Liberation Army and put on a green uniform, and I walked into the red school to carry the revolutionary gun ......", bidding farewell to the old folks who could not leave the country.
After getting off the bus at Shangqiu Railway Station in Henan, we boarded a long green train. The train started, and the platoon commander who picked us up taught us to sing a new song: "Put on your suit, carry a gun, and ......be full of pride and high morale" ("Railway Soldiers Ambition in the Quartet" was a march at that time, and the original tune was restored after the end of the "Cultural Revolution"). That's when I realized that we were railroad soldiers.
The train seems to know that we, the hot-blooded men in the prime of their youth, and its special fate, run very happily and whistle very loudly. Listening to the "clang" and "clang" sound of the wheels hitting the rails, we also feel particularly pleasant and intimate.
The next day, when the fiery sun rose, we arrived at the headquarters of the new corps, Fu Village, Dawang Town, Huxian County, located on the outskirts of Xi'an. The tense new training life begins! The stars have not yet faded, and the loud sound of the military horn wakes us from our sleep. Morning exercises, walking queues, learning to shoot, practicing bomb throwing...... Grab the meal, otherwise the assembly call will be blown before you finish eating; Going to the toilet is always a trot, for fear of delaying training and racing against time; Doing laundry and writing letters home can only be waited until Sunday. The life of the recruit corps is so intense and hard, monotonous and fulfilling.
One day, I was lying on the cold snow with my comrades-in-arms to practice shooting in a lying position, when the instructor of the recruit company and a tall, thin cadre who looked like the Yang platoon in the movie "Visitors on the Iceberg" walked towards our platoon. The instructor asked our platoon commander, "Which one is called Han Yaoxian?" The platoon commander shouted to me: "Han Yaoxian! I immediately stood up and replied loudly, "Here!" The instructor and the "Yang Platoon Leader" laughed. Platoon Commander Yang asked me kindly: "Are you a correspondent of Shandong People's Radio and Dazhong Daily?" I said, "Yes." Platoon Commander Yang asked me again: "What level of education are you?" I replied, "High school." As they were leaving, Platoon Commander Yang said to me, "Tomorrow you will go with me to interview a few recruits and write a report." ”
After more than three months of training for the new regiment, we went to the construction site of the Xiangyu Railway in the depths of the Qinling Mountains and on the banks of the Hanshui River "with pride and high morale." I was assigned to the laboratory squad of the 47th Regiment Service Company Testing and Platoon. A few months later, I was ordered to report to the reporting team of the Propaganda Unit of the Political Department of the regiment. Later, I learned that in the new corps, I was selected by "Platoon Commander Yang" and Staff Officer Zhang Baoxiang of the headquarters at the same time. I remember that a few days after "Platoon Commander Yang" took me to collect and write a report, Staff Officer Zhang Baoxiang called me to the company headquarters and asked me some questions about chemistry. Therefore, I was able to be assigned to the laboratory test class of the service company, and it turned out that I was favored by Staff Officer Zhang.
What a fate! When I walked into the propaganda unit, the first thing I saw was "Platoon Commander Yang" who took me to interview in the new corps. It turned out that this young, capable, and heroic "Platoon Commander Yang" was a senior officer of the propaganda unit, and his name was Hu Kerong. He is a native of Tianshui, Gansu Province, enlisted in the army in November 1959, and has been rated as "Five Good Soldiers", "Activists Studying Chairman Mao's Writings" and "Advanced Representative of Four Good Companies" many times, and has been awarded third-class meritorious service twice. He enthusiastically introduced me to all the comrades in the Propaganda Unit.
At that time, the reporting team had five veterans. Two are Shanghai soldiers who enlisted in 1969, one is named Cao Xinquan (later renamed Hu Fan), and the other is Guo Changlin; The two are Hubei soldiers who enlisted in 1970, one is called Xing Shaode and the other is Li Mingliang; One is a Sichuan soldier who enlisted in 1971, named Yang Kegui. Walking into the reporting team, whether it is the number of years I have been in the army or the level of news writing, I am an authentic recruit.
These five veterans are all very skilled, and they are all masters of news reporting.
Hu Fan is the leader of the reporting team, and his ability to capture news, collect and write manuscripts, and organize and plan is very strong. He was particularly good at collecting and writing news figures, such as his report on Xiao Chongbing, the deputy platoon commander of a platoon of a company, who was an expert in the battle tunnel collapse at that time, and he made an extremely beautiful short and flat fast, and the manuscript was published in the "Railway Soldier" newspaper and the "People's Liberation Army Daily" successively. It's really the envy of us. You must know that in those days, there were very few newspapers and periodicals, the central authorities had only "two newspapers and one periodical" ("People's Daily," "Jiefangjun Bao," and "Red Flag" magazine), each province, autonomous region, and municipality had a local daily newspaper, and each of the major military regions of the military system had a four-page newspaper for each of the various branches of the armed forces, and there were only a few dozen newspapers in the whole country.
Guo Changlin is steady, sensitive to news, and good at discovering news points from ordinary life.
Xing Shaode was a middle school principal before enlisting in the army, and he was very good at writing, and his manuscripts were tightly structured and logical.
Li Mingliang can be described as the "little handsome guy" of the reporting team, with a new reporting angle and beautiful pen handwriting, which editor does not feel pleasing to the eye when he sees his manuscript?
Yang Kegui has a flexible mind, quick thinking, fast writing, and a great ability to rely on horses.
"If you are a threesome, you must have my teacher." The five comrades-in-arms who get along with me day and night and sleep in the same room are all my own teachers! I am so lucky and blessed to walk into such a talented collective and to be in the company of so many talented and wise men! I secretly made up my mind to cherish the opportunity, learn from them, improve my level of news gathering and writing as soon as possible, and make my greatest efforts for the army's propaganda and reporting work. Several veterans cared for me like brothers, teaching me how to conduct in-depth and detailed on-the-spot interviews, how to carefully refine news topics, how to reveal the inner world of characters, and how to dig into the ideological depth of the manuscript...... In particular, Team Leader Hu Fan often personally led me to the company to "catch live fish", instructed me on how to choose the angle of the report, helped me revise the manuscript word by word, and did not even let go of a single punctuation.
Several of their veterans often chanted in front of me: There were two masters in our reporting team, who were also Shanghai soldiers who joined the army in 1969, one was named Zhu Ruihua and the other was Zhu Guilin. As the organ newspaper of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, Jiefang Ribao is a major newspaper that has a great influence throughout the country. It is not so easy to become an editor and reporter for such a newspaper. The two of them are neither from a professional class nor have a family background, and they have completely relied on their true talents to enter the high threshold of Jiefang Daily. Before they were discharged from the army, the lineup of our reporting team was very strong and quite strong, and the four Shanghai soldiers were the pillars of the well-known and hard state. At that time, our regiment's propaganda and reporting work was vigorous and impressive. At that time, although there was no such thing as the "Four Heavenly Kings", the four of them were cadres and soldiers, and they were the "Four Heavenly Kings" in the minds of several people in our reporting team. Speaking of them today, more than 40 years later, my comrades-in-arms still remember them, and unanimously recognized that they are the "most powerful" in the reporting team. It is no exaggeration to say that their period was the most glorious period of the 47th Regiment's propaganda and reporting work.
From left: Guo Changlin, Zhu Ruihua, Zhu Guilin, Cao Xinquan (Hu Fan)
While I am glad that I have the opportunity to meet five good teachers and friends, I often regret that I have alternated with the other two "Heavenly Kings" who have lost new veterans.
However, what I never expected was that my dream would come true after more than 40 years of regret.
In the spring of 2017, Hu Kerong, who is nearly eighty years old and highly respected, initiated the organization of a gathering of comrades-in-arms of the Propaganda Unit of the 47th Regiment. More than 30 comrades-in-arms who could be contacted by the Propaganda Unit and its subordinate reporting group, film group, and literary and artistic propaganda team rushed to the ancient city of Xi'an from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Tianshui in Gansu, Zhongxiang in Hubei, Jiangmen in Guangdong, Zibo in Shandong, and Xianyang in Shaanxi.
"I still remember the young man of the past, heroic and handsome. Now it is difficult to recognize each other, and the reason is to change the sideburns and hang frost. "The strong young man of the year was upgraded to an uncle, and the little girl of the year now has someone to give up her seat on the bus. When we gather again after more than 40 years, the excitement, joy and emotion of everyone are truly indescribable.
The comrades-in-arms who participated in the gathering included veteran officers who had entered the Qinghai-Tibet Line for eight years and worked in the propaganda unit for eight years, as well as the "closing chief" who had been reorganized into soldiers; There are not only old railway soldiers who sweat into the Kunming line, Xiangyu line, and Qinghai-Tibet line, but also "three-line" student soldiers who can sing and dance, play, play and sing...... What excites me the most is that several veterans of the reporting team are all here, and there is no shortage of the "Four Heavenly Kings", and there are many of them. The lineup of the reporting team was the most neat and the largest number of people, with a total of eight people. Hu Fan, the veteran team leader, introduced the brief situation of the "Eight King Kongs" of the reporting team one by one: four people stuck to their news posts all their lives until they retired, two became government officials, one person obtained the senior title of registered economist, and one became a management talent of a central enterprise.
Zhu Ruihua, one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" who is still working hard after retirement and is currently the president of the Fengxian Branch of the Shanghai Old Journalists Association and the president of the Fengxian District Old Journalists Association, published a book to solicit articles for his comrades-in-arms in Shanghai to commemorate the 50 th anniversary of his enlistment. I thought it was meaningful, so I responded on the spot. So, after coming back, Lala wrote this article to express his gratitude to the "Four Heavenly Kings" and all the veterans of the reporting team! Salute to all the Shanghai comrades-in-arms of the 47th Regiment!
Members of the reporting team gathered in Xi'an and took a group photo with Director Hu Kerong
From left: Zhu Ruihua, Xing Shaode, Guo Changlin, Hu Fan, Hu Kerong, Zhu Guilin, Yang Kegui, Li Mingliang, Han Yaoxian
Author: Han Yaoxian, who enlisted in the army from Liangshan, Shandong Province in December 1972, served as the platoon commander of the 1st Company, a reporter and editor of the Railway Soldiers Newspaper
- Excerpt from "O Hero! Railroad Soldier
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