How can legal and disciplinary education (法纪教育) be transformed from "rain that wets only the surface" (雨过地皮湿) into "moisture that nourishes silently" (润物细无声)? Yan Feihong, a platoon leader in a company of the People's Armed Police Xi'an Detachment, leveraged his personal strengths to establish the "Hongfa Tongxing" (鸿法同行) legal popularization studio. By writing, directing, and acting in short legal and disciplinary dramas, he turned case studies into stories and used formats that officers and soldiers enjoy to resolve doubts and answer questions. From "zoning out while listening" to "actively demanding new episodes," from "being made to study" to "wanting to study," the transformation reflects an innovation in the philosophy of legal and disciplinary education and an exploration of how to make young officers and soldiers participants in the rule-of-law effort and disseminators of legal and disciplinary culture (法纪文化). In this installment, we enter this studio to observe their vivid practice in innovating the forms of legal and disciplinary education.
"I know this content is important, but I keep zoning out." After a legal and disciplinary education class in a company of the People's Armed Police Xi'an Detachment, a soldier's muttered remark reached the ears of Platoon Leader Yan Feihong.
Soldiers zoning out during legal and disciplinary education classes was not an isolated phenomenon. During one conversation, soldiers told Yan Feihong: "Every class is basically the instructor talking and us listening. The legal provisions get read aloud but we can't remember them, let alone apply them in practice." "We listen during class and forget everything afterward."
After conducting in-depth research, Yan Feihong found that getting legal and disciplinary education to truly sink in (入脑入心) had become a difficult problem troubling many grassroots political instructors. He then began searching for an answer to this problem.
During one rest period, Yan Feihong saw several comrades huddled together, absorbed in watching a short drama, occasionally discussing the plot. The scene gave him an idea. Since everyone liked that format, could legal provisions and typical cases also be produced as short dramas, allowing officers and soldiers to absorb the relevant knowledge through gradual influence (潜移默化)?
He acted immediately. Yan Feihong enlisted two soldiers, serving as both director and actor himself, and starting from the laws and regulations most closely relevant to everyone, produced the first three-minute short drama: "Remember the 'Cup' Tragedy of Accidents — Don't Be the Greatest 'Drunk' of All Time" (《牢记事故"杯"剧，不做千古"醉"人》). In the video, a soldier on leave gathers with friends, going from "just drink a little" to "one more cup," ultimately losing composure after drinking and triggering a dispute. The vivid portrayal, paired with a thought-provoking ending, left officers and soldiers deep in reflection.
After the video was uploaded to the detachment's network platform, it surpassed one thousand views that same evening. The comment section received numerous messages: "So legal and disciplinary education can be conducted this way," "After watching this video, I remember the relevant laws and regulations clearly" …
The warm reception the legal and disciplinary short drama received from comrades strengthened Yan Feihong's confidence. After higher authorities learned of the situation, they strongly supported his approach. One month later, equipped with professional equipment and bringing together personnel from each company with strengths in photography, scriptwriting, and performance, the "Hongfa Tongxing" legal popularization studio was officially established. Each week, the studio reviews cases reported by higher authorities and the real legal and disciplinary confusions of officers and soldiers, precisely focusing on risk points facing grassroots officers and soldiers — online gambling and online lending (网赌网贷), online social fraud, risks of leaking classified information (失泄密隐患), and violations involving alcohol — and converts them into scripts close to the daily lives of officers and soldiers. "Whatever officers and soldiers care about, whatever tends to trip them up — that's what we film." Yan Feihong articulated the studio's topic-selection principle.
Today, Yan Feihong has become the detachment's "internet-famous platoon leader." Officers and soldiers not only frequently urge him to post updates but also proactively "place orders." The studio's back-end has received many suggestions: "Could you film some policy explainers on medical care for military dependents?" "Basic secrecy knowledge urgently needs to be popularized!" Some soldiers have even come directly to him, voluntarily signing up to join the filming team.
When the subjects of education become its agents, legal and disciplinary knowledge is no longer merely rigid provisions in documents and notebooks, but becomes everyday content that officers and soldiers actively share and enjoy spreading.
From a class that caused minds to wander, to a series of short dramas that keep people coming back for more, the practical exploration of the People's Armed Police Xi'an Detachment has demonstrated: it is not that young officers and soldiers do not want to learn laws and regulations — they simply need an approach that fits them. Only when "rain that wets only the surface" becomes "moisture that nourishes silently" can the seeds of legal and disciplinary education truly take root in the hearts of officers and soldiers.
Today, the detachment is preparing a "Legal Popularization Short Drama Creation Training Course," planning to select key personnel from each company for concentrated training. The studio has also begun building a "Legal Popularization Short Drama Materials Library" to collect the everyday legal and disciplinary confusions of officers and soldiers. As night falls, officers and soldiers are once again in the study room waiting for the latest short drama to go online. Yan Feihong opens his computer and creates a new project document. This time the theme is "Legal Aid for Military Dependents" — the topic came from a soldier's message: "Platoon Leader, something came up at home. Could you explain it in detail?"
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A comrade's offhand "complaint" reminded me of how it felt when I was a student cadet, sitting in the audience wanting to listen but unable to take anything in. During that period I kept wondering: can legal and disciplinary education actually be both interesting and practical?
Right up until the last moment before the first short drama was uploaded, I was deeply anxious: would comrades be interested? Would the leadership think this format was not serious enough?
I never expected the legal and disciplinary short drama to receive such praise. What truly left an impression on me was a comment from a comrade in the comment section: "Platoon Leader, your acting was so real — after watching, my heart tightened. This kind of thing could really happen to someone around me." At that moment I suddenly felt that this three-minute video was more effective than hours of my lecturing in the classroom.
Every time I see comrades discussing in the comment section, every time I hear a comrade say "this episode was great, after watching I realized I've actually memorized the laws and regulations," I feel that this work I'm doing has value.
Everyone jokingly calls me the "internet-famous platoon leader." I don't think of myself as any kind of "internet celebrity" — I just want to use my own strengths to help comrades strengthen their legal awareness (法治意识), take fewer wrong turns at work, and stay more alert in life. As long as comrades are willing to watch, this effort has not been wasted.
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Even though every class involves reading out notifications and reciting provisions, deep down I always felt that the situations in those notifications were far removed from my training and daily life, and that I probably wouldn't run into those problems myself.
Then one rest period, I scrolled to a legal popularization short drama forwarded by a comrade, titled "The 'Pandora's Box' Opened by a Pop-Up Ad" (《一个弹窗打开的"潘多拉"》). Watching the story of a soldier in the drama being drawn in by a pop-up advertisement and going from "just try it once" to drowning in debt, I felt a jolt — because many of the scenes in it were directly relevant to me.
Beyond learning lessons from the cases, many of the short dramas produced by the studio also explained clearly to me how to protect my own rights and interests. Last year, new regulations on home leave were promulgated. The day the notice was distributed to the squad, comrades began talking over each other in discussion, and in the end only a few keywords stuck.
A few days later, the studio's "Everything About Leave — Explained All at Once" (《休假那些事，一次给你讲明白》) went online. In the video, a soldier preparing to go home on leave calculates mileage, counts days, and figures out reimbursements — each step corresponding to a new regulation. Under what conditions split leave is permitted, in what circumstances how many round-trip travel reimbursements are allowed, even how to fill out the forms — all of it was demonstrated. After watching, it suddenly became clear to me: those complex provisions were actually not that hard to understand.
From that point on, I truly came to realize that the lessons in the cases are not just other people's lessons, and that legal provisions are not just dry text — all of it is substantive content that guides my training and daily life.
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After all these years working at the grassroots level, I have continually thought about how legal and disciplinary education classes should be taught so that officers and soldiers are interested in learning and actually understand what they learn.
It is not that the grassroots lacks good cases, nor that it lacks good instructors. But once class starts, it tends to be me talking and them listening — heard in class, forgotten after class. This is an awkward situation that nearly every officer conducting education has encountered.
Seeing the heated discussion sparked by the short dramas filmed by Platoon Leader Yan, I felt deeply moved. It is not that officers and soldiers do not want to learn laws and regulations — we need to explore new "ways of opening" (打开方式) legal and disciplinary education.
What we must do, beyond giving exploration and innovation sufficient space and trust, is to carry out rigorous review and gatekeeping of content. After deliberation by the detachment Party committee, a review mechanism was simultaneously established for short drama production: every episode's topic must be filed for the record, finished productions must be jointly reviewed, and risks of classified information exposure must be resolutely avoided.
The changes since the studio was established more than half a year ago have exceeded my expectations. Officers' and soldiers' scores on post-class legal regulation tests have improved noticeably. What truly pleases me is that officers and soldiers have shifted from being subjects of education to being its agents, from passive reception to active participation — achieving a "two-way convergence" (双向奔赴).
In the next step, we plan to run creation training courses and build a materials library, so that more grassroots key personnel can pick up a camera. The strength of one person is limited, but a mechanism can continuously cultivate more "Yan Feihongs." We have only just set out on this road, but as long as the direction is right, distance is no obstacle.