Stationed Year-Round in the Desert, He Uses a Paintbrush to Tell the Stories of This Land
The Desert Beneath the Paintbrush ■ Li Quanjun, Liu Changwei
Soldiers of a unit under the Xinjiang Military Command sit gathered beneath a poplar tree, sharing what is on their minds. Photo by PLA Daily special correspondent Wang Junqiang.
A fierce wind sweeps across the banks of the Tarim River, lashing the gnarled branches of the desert poplars and lifting a murky yellow cloud of dust and sand. A sentry stands facing into the wind, eyes sharp and fixed on the distance… This is the scene Staff Sergeant Second Class Zhou Zhijie, of a unit under the Xinjiang Military Command, painted on the wall of the garrison compound.
Not long ago, the unit launched a cultural-construction initiative, and Zhou Zhijie volunteered to take on the wall-mural assignment. Having been stationed in the desert year-round, he holds deep affection for every grain of sand and stone, every blade of grass and leaf here. This time, he decided to draw on what was right at hand—gathering stones of every shape, scooping up fine yellow sand, and collecting branches and leaves from the desert poplars—and began creating with the desert's distinctive yellow as his dominant tone.
As the brush moved lightly across the wall, memories accumulated over many years flickered in and out of Zhou Zhijie's mind.
The unit is stationed on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert. Many years ago, Zhou Zhijie came to the unit from the humid southern slopes of the Qinling Mountains and was hit hard by the dry climate and raging sandstorms. "My nasal passages kept drying out, and at night I tossed and turned, unable to sleep." The most unbearable thing was being caught in a sudden sandstorm while on duty—visibility dropped to nothing, and in no more than a few dozen seconds, sand had worked its way into every part of his body.
Not long after, the unit joined local residents to plant trees along the desert's edge. That day the wind was still blowing hard, strong enough to force people's eyes shut. Officers, soldiers, and villagers gripped shovels and cradled seedlings, laboring with their heads down in the swirling yellow sand.
Watching everyone working together as one, then gazing toward the golden desert poplars in the distance, Zhou Zhijie felt a sudden clarity in his heart: "Generation after generation, the border guards have stood firm—no matter how fierce the sandstorm, they do not retreat." That day, Zhou Zhijie—who had always loved painting—picked up his sketchbook and captured the scene of soldiers and civilians planting trees together to hold back the desert, stroke by stroke.
Gradually, Zhou Zhijie began fixing more of the stories around him onto the page. His most recent painting is titled "Taking the Championship." The backdrop is still the desert with its rolling yellow sand; the subject is his comrade Liang Ziliang.
Last winter, the unit held a drone-racing simulation competition in the heart of the desert. Corporal Liang Ziliang had devoted himself to studying racing drones for a long time and had hoped to show what he could do at the competition—but an accident occurred while he was acquiring a target. The drone's flight path was thrown off by erratic wind directions, and it crashed straight into a branch of a desert poplar.
Watching the equipment fall, Liang Ziliang was filled with regret. The judge walked over and said quietly, "The weather was terrible—mistakes were inevitable." Liang Ziliang shook his head and clenched his fist: "My skills are just not strong enough."
The defeat did not bring Liang Ziliang down. From that point on, in order to master the techniques for controlling equipment in sandy, windy conditions, he deliberately chose to train in bad weather. When fierce winds made the drone's body shake, he drilled repeatedly on stabilization techniques; when blowing sand blocked his line of sight, he familiarized himself over and over with the terrain of the poplar groves and practiced blind operation and target identification.
Through the bone-chilling cold winds of deep winter and the scorching sun of the height of summer, day after day of persistence made Liang Ziliang's skills ever more refined. Last month, the unit organized the "Desert Vanguard" professional skills competition. Liang Ziliang, stepping onto the field again, was calm and composed, controlling the racing drone in steady flight. In the end, he successfully completed every assessed event and took the championship in one stroke.
The wind still howls and races across the boundless desert. In front of the wall mural Zhou Zhijie created, his comrades spontaneously broke into applause. In the eyes of the officers and soldiers guarding the border, the deep and pale yellows of this land are no longer a monotonous backdrop, but a magnificent ground color soaked through with loyalty, struggle, and glory.
A sentry in the desert. Photo by PLA Daily special correspondent Wang Junqiang.