By Li Zishan
According to the explanations in the oldest Chinese dictionary, “The Origin of Chinese Characters”, the character “戍” looks like a bayonet-carrying soldier, and the character “边” means the edge of a cliff. Together they form the expression “戍边”, meaning “a soldier guarding the border”.
Wang Jianmin, a photographer from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has wandered all the country’s border and coastal areas on foot over the past four decades, to record the special band of troops who garrison the country’s vast frontiers.
The PLA has five border posts on the farthest frontiers: the easternmost post in Wusu Town of Fuyuan County, Heilongjiang Province; the westernmost in Wuqia County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region; the southernmost on the Huayang Reef, in the Nansha Archipelago in the South China Sea; the northernmost in Mohe County, Heilongjiang; and the highest in the Karakoram Mountains in Xinjiang.
Wang has visited all five. Rather than take pictures of the military facilities and the surrounding landscapes, Wang made the border guards his sole focus.
At the end of 1978, the vast grassland was covered with heavy snow, but soldiers at the Mandura frontier company were vigilant, despite the difficulties of maintaining food supplies, and the discomforts of the barracks and daily life. Their weapons were also backward.
Troops on the watchtower or patrolling hundreds of meters away suffered in the freezing winds. Wang stayed with a patrol, braving snow and winds. He carried two cameras and operated them with frozen hands. The cold hindered the shutter closure whenever he snapped a picture.
An ethnic Mongolian soldier shivered in the temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees centigrade, but he stayed at his post, with his eyes keen and alert. “The border is like a fence on the prairie, so we soldiers are like a sheep dog guarding the door,” he told Wang.
In the Karakoram Mountains, west of the Mongolian grasslands, are the vast Gobi Desert, highlands and mountains, where lie China’s westernmost borders. In the hearts of PLA men deployed at the border posts, the Karakoram Mountains are sacred. For these soldiers, “climbing the mountain” means ascending the Karakoram Mountains, at an averaged altitude of 4,500 meters. Few green plants grow there as it boasts an average year-round temperature of zero degrees centigrade, the oxygen content is just 47 percent of the lowland atmosphere, and the ultraviolet radiation is six times stronger. When you walk in the Karakoram Mountains, it seems like you are carrying a 20-kg load compared with lowland areas. Even lying down you can feel like you’re climbing seven flights of stairs. Here, common influenza kills.
