Source: People's Daily - People's Daily
Recently, the movie "Chosin Lake" was screened, and the bravery and sacrifice of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army touched hundreds of millions of viewers.
71 years ago, it was in this Battle of Chosin Lake that the volunteer soldier Zhu Yanfu (above. Ma Binguo) lost his limbs and left eye. After that, he relied on tenacious perseverance to "stand" again, returned to his hometown of Zhangjiaquan Village, Xili Town, Yiyuan County, Shandong Province, as the secretary of the party branch, and changed the poor and backward appearance of his hometown in 25 years.
He used his stump to hold the pen and completed two autobiographical novels. In 2019, Zhu Yanfu was awarded the national honorary title of "People's Model".
Devote your life to unfinished business
In 1947, at the age of 14, Zhu Yanfu became a soldier in the People's Liberation Army and participated in the Battle of Huaihai and the Battle of Crossing the River. In early December 1950, Zhu Yanfu was ordered to participate in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea with his troops.
On the 250-200 heights of Chosin Lake, his company braved the freezing cold of minus 30 degrees Celsius to fight a bloody battle with a well-equipped enemy for three days and three nights.
Zhu Yanfu recalled in his autobiographical novel "Extreme Life": "On this 250 high ground that has been sealed by heavy snow, in the front-line traffic trenches that have been completely destroyed... There is a life that is reviving very slowly. With amazing perseverance, Zhu Yanfu crawled for more than 3,000 meters inch by inch and found the troops.
After 93 days in a coma and 47 surgeries, Zhu Yanfu miraculously woke up. However, the fierce fighting caused serious damage to his body.
Zhu Yanfu fell into despair several times, but thinking of the sacrifice of his comrades-in-arms, he decided to devote his life to their unfinished business. As a specially disabled soldier, Zhu Yanfu did not continue to live in the Invalides Hospital, but chose to return to his hometown.
Learning to live and take care of himself is the first "fortress" he wants to conquer, and fighting against pain has become the norm of Zhu Yanfu's life.
At first, as soon as the stump arm picked up the spoon, the spoon fell off; the spoon was picked up with the mouth and the bowl was knocked over; finally the rice was scooped up, and just as he was about to open his mouth with his head down, the spoon fell down again. An action should be practiced dozens or hundreds of times repeatedly. With each meal, he was exhausted.
In practice again and again, Zhu Yanfu learned to eat by himself, and then learned to tie bandages, load and unload prosthetic limbs, and go to the toilet to take care of himself... "My greatest happiness is that everything in my life does not need to be helped by others, I do it myself." Zhu Yanfu said.
"When people live, they have to struggle"
In 1958, Zhu Yanfu served as the secretary of the party branch of Zhangjiaquan Village, shouldering the burden of leading the villagers to live a good life.
Zhangjiaquan is sandwiched between two mountains and a river, and the cultivated land is scattered on the hillside, which is arid and barren, and the yield is very low. In the face of natural disasters, harvests have been poor for many years.
Poverty alleviation requires land change. Zhangjiaquan Village has a ditch that has been abandoned for many years, more than 1,000 meters long from north to south, and the bottom of the ditch has a drop of hundreds of meters. Zhu Yanfu was determined to transform it. The upper part is filled with soil to form a piece of farmland, and the culvert is built below for flood discharge during the flood season.
Zhu Yanfu soaked on the construction site every day, holding a shovel with two stump arms, and cultivating the soil little by little. Under his leadership, the Zhangjiaquan people built a culvert of more than 1,500 meters long, a ditch that has been deserted for a long time and become a flattened arable land. In that year, Zhangjiaquan increased grain production by more than 50,000 catties. A few years later, Zhu Yanfu led the Zhangjiaquan people to turn several other wastelands into fertile land.
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In the more than 20 years that Zhu Yanfu served as the secretary of the village party branch, Zhangjiaquan Village filled in 3 deep ditches and added more than 200 acres of grain fields; 9 wells and 3 large wells were drilled successively, and 1500 meters of water channels were built.
Ploughing mountains, digging wells to find water, building roads and building electricity... Zhangjiaquan Village set a number of firsts among the surrounding villages.
"When people live, they have to struggle; if they struggle, they are happy; if they struggle, happiness will continue." Zhu Yanfu said.
"Faith does not fall, spirit does not collapse"
In 1982, Zhu Yanfu, who suffered from hepatitis, retired from the post of village party secretary. After leaving office, Zhu Yanfu had a new goal, and he wanted to write a book about the heroic struggle of his comrades-in-arms. Writing with a pen and flipping through the dictionary is not much easier than learning to eat and dress, and digging a well to tidy up the field.
If you want to write a book, you must first practice writing. He figured out two ways to write with a mouth pen and a pen tied to his arm, from writing words as large as a bowl to words as small as a grain of wheat, Zhu Yanfu spent two years.
During the writing period, Zhu Yanfu went back and forth to 4 dictionaries. In the beginning, you can only write dozens of words a day, and some words have to be rewritten many times to be recognized. But he persisted, often writing for more than a dozen hours a day. The veteran soldier, who used his tongue to look up the dictionary, wrote a long autobiographical novel of more than 330,000 words, "Extreme Life", and then wrote "Boy No Regrets".
To this day, whenever Zhu Yanfu returns to Zhangjiaquan Village, ordinary people still gather around him. The elderly want to talk to him about the past, the middle-aged people want to talk to him about the new changes in the village, and the young people want to see what the legendary figure looks like.
In 2014, the "Zhu Yanfu Deeds Exhibition Hall" was built in the village, which has received hundreds of study visiting groups and tens of thousands of students from all over the country, becoming an important local education base.
From holding the barrel of a gun, holding a hoe to using a pen, through all kinds of hardships, Zhu Yanfu has never bowed to fate. Looking back at his past life, Zhu Yanfu said: "I don't believe in fate, and I don't believe in luck. I believe in my own judgment, I believe in the party! As long as the faith does not fall and the spirit does not collapse, everything can be carried over!"
People's Daily (04/10/2021)