Wayue Village in Karuo District, Changdu City, Tibet, sits adjacent to a brigade of the 77th Group Army. The herders say—
"Jinju Mami" Are Neighbors, and Even More—They Are Family
■ Chang Chenyue, Zhang Chen
Soldiers of a brigade of the 77th Group Army formed a "Snow Region Light Cavalry" (雪域轻骑兵) detachment to visit the village where they are stationed, publicize the Party's "Three Rural Issues" (三农) policies, and learn about the needs of the people. Photo by Wang Zhuoce.
In May, in Changdu, Tibet, the mountain pastures have just begun to turn green. The yak herds of Wayue Village can no longer wait to move to higher ground. The copper bells beneath their necks jingle and clatter, their sound echoing through the valleys.
Wayue Village is built against the mountains—dozens of Tibetan-style small buildings that seem to have grown naturally from the terraced slopes of the hillside. The altitude is high, the soil layer thin, and herders have made their living raising yaks for generations. Today the land remains vast and the sky low, but the lives of the herders are very different from before.
Doji Ciren, Secretary of the Wayue Village Party Branch, said that one important reason the village has improved so much in recent years is that the "Jinju Mami" (金珠玛米—Tibetan for the People's Liberation Army) have come to be by their side. As the villagers put it: "'Jinju Mami' are neighbors, and even more—they are family."
I
Near Wayue Village in Karuo District, Changdu City, lies the garrison of a brigade of the 77th Group Army.
"We moved in in 2020. After arriving, in order to build closer ties with the local people, we began visiting this village." Company Political Instructor Wu Xiao said. The first time he attended a Wayue Village Party branch meeting, nine Party members had been notified, but only five showed up. After Doji Ciren finished reading a document, he looked up and asked if anyone had opinions. Below him it was completely silent—not a single person spoke.
"I felt right then that something was wrong. These were major matters concerning the village's construction and development—how could the village's Party members have nothing to say?" Wu Xiao sat there, his mind full of doubt.
He brought his confusion back to the garrison, and that evening discussed it with the branch committee members late into the night. They worked out that to build the village well, the first step was to establish a "backbone" (主心骨).
Change began with pairing up. The brigade selected two battle-hardened honorary companies—the "Model Company for Defending the Nation" (卫国模范连) and the "Fierce Tiger Red Eighth Company" (猛虎红八连) Party branches—to form a co-building partnership with the Wayue Village Party branch. Soldiers come each month to attend village Party branch meetings, and each quarter they jointly carry out a themed Party Day activity.
The first joint themed Party Day activity was held in the company's honors room. After the village Party members visited, they learned that this unit traces its lineage to the 9th Regiment, 3rd Training Brigade, 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army. During the most grueling period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, they shared hardships with the people and were bound together with them as closely as water and milk, earning recognition from the Ji-Lu-Yu Military Region as the "Model Regiment for Mass Work" (群众工作模范团). In 1949, this unit was reorganized as the 155th Regiment, 52nd Division, 18th Army, and subsequently advanced into Tibet. The soldiers built roads as they advanced, chiseling the Sichuan-Tibet Highway out of sheer cliff faces with shovels and steel bars. After many twists and turns, seventy years later, they had returned to the snow-covered plateau where their predecessors had fought and built.
"So the 'Jinju Mami' of those years have come back!" This singular bond of fate immediately closed the distance between the military and the people.
From that point on, soldiers guided village Party members step by step through everything—from how to properly conduct the "Three Meetings and One Lesson" (三会一课) to how to carry out democratic appraisals—teaching them hands-on. Gradually, the face of the village Party branch changed. Doji Ciren felt this most keenly: "Now Party members don't need to be reminded about meetings—they arrive in full and on time. During discussion, everyone speaks up actively and enthusiastically!"
Last year, the village planned to build a water storage reservoir, which required using herders' land. The Party branch was just working out how to broach the subject when, unexpectedly, veteran Party member Nima Ciren was the first to step forward: "Use my family's land—no compensation needed." The words had barely landed before other Party members followed one after another, and the difficult problem was resolved at a stroke.
II
"If you can't speak Mandarin, you really can't get anywhere when you go out." Wayue Village Party member Qimei Duoji knows this from deep personal experience. He remembers going to the county seat on business in earlier years—because his Chinese was so poor, he had to ask someone to help him fill out a form. That humiliation lodged in his heart like a thorn.
Qimei Duoji's embarrassment was not an isolated case. At that time, roughly half of the herders in Wayue Village did not understand Chinese.
"For people's thinking to keep pace, the wall of language must first be broken down." In the spring of 2021, the unit's "Snow Region Night School" (雪域夜校) formally opened in the village committee activity room. The instructor was a bilingual Tibetan-Chinese backbone soldier from the company, Staff Sergeant Second Class Gama Ciren. With no textbooks available, Gama Ciren referenced Chinese-as-a-foreign-language teaching materials and began from pinyin, leading students through each sound one by one and correcting them.
Qimei Duoji was the night school's most diligent "student"—present every evening without fail, rain or shine, his crumpled notebook filled with dense notes. Three months later, he could hold a simple conversation in Mandarin. Later, he began haltingly reading documents on his own. Still later, he represented the village at a district-level meeting, sat confidently in the front row, filled three full pages of notes, came back and conveyed everything to the villagers—clearly and completely.
While Gama Ciren taught language and explained policies to herders at the "Snow Region Night School," his comrade Staff Sergeant Second Class Liu Can served as an off-campus tutoring instructor at the township primary school. The children of Wayue Village mostly attend Karuo Central Primary School. Liu Can regularly went to the school to lead students in standing at attention in military posture, practicing military boxing, and playing games.
Last year, to cultivate students' sense of patriotism and love of country (家国情怀), the brigade guided Karuo Central Primary School in forming a "Youth Flag-Raising Team" (少年国旗班). Liu Can took students to visit the Changdu City Revolutionary History Museum, explaining the profound significance of raising the national flag; he led students in practicing flag-raising ceremony etiquette and shared stories of the company's battle flag participating in military parades.
"I'm actually quite envious of these kids!" Seeing the village children not only speak Mandarin fluently but also write essays, Qimei Duoji's own drive to study grew stronger. Over these past few years, he has studied policies, analyzed markets, and together with Gama Ciren researched how to raise yaks scientifically. "Before, I thought the more yaks the better. Now I know you have to raise them well to make money." Qimei Duoji said that ever since he learned to look up online how to prevent and treat yak diseases, the slaughter rate of his own yaks has improved. Today, as a Party member, he is also paired with two herder households to provide assistance, determined to "make sure everyone raising yaks can earn money."
III
Wayue Village sits amid vast pastureland, and herders make their living raising yaks. But relying on yaks alone means long cycles and heavy exposure to market fluctuations—herders' lives remained tight. Whether the people could "walk on more legs" (多条腿走路) became another concern weighing on the soldiers' minds.
A few years ago, brigade officer Wang Liqun, while conducting research in the village, learned that the herders had organized a transport team—several large trucks hauling building materials year-round in the surrounding area. Because road conditions in the mountain region are poor, tire wear is especially severe. But the nearest place to patch or change tires was in a township dozens of kilometers away; a round trip consumed most of a day.
"Could we set up our own tire repair point?" Wang Liqun shared the idea with Doji Ciren, whose eyes immediately lit up—then, after a moment, he shook his head: "Can't afford to start it. It's skilled work, and nobody in our village knows how."
Back at the garrison, Wang Liqun found Sergeant Chen Feng, a specialist in vehicle repair, and discussed opening a training course for the herders. The course opened, and Chen Feng carefully prepared instructional materials. But when he lectured on terminology such as tire pressure and tread patterns, the herders still looked blank. Wang Liqun and Chen Feng put their heads together and simply moved the classroom to the main road at the village entrance. Whenever they saw a transport team vehicle pull over, they would gather around, call over the driver and any interested herders, and teach on the spot using the still-warm tires.
"Look—this is insufficient tire pressure." "Listen—that hissing sound means there's a slow leak." After two months, two herders were genuinely able to operate independently with competence. One month after that, the unit coordinated dedicated assistance funds and helped the village open a tire repair shop. The two herders became the shop's staff, working right at their own doorstep, drawing a monthly wage, and receiving a year-end dividend. In its first year of operation, it added nearly 50,000 yuan in income to the village collective.
Word of Wayue Village's tire repair shop spread quickly, and transport operators from several surrounding villages also began coming here for regular tire maintenance.
Not far from the shop, a water storage reservoir built with military aid officially began supplying water this spring. Water scarcity has been a problem tormenting the plateau for a hundred years, but with the reservoir, villagers no longer need to worry about water shortages in the dry season.
Cupping a handful of clear water, 72-year-old elder Ciren Zhuoma's eyes reddened: "This is the sweet dew (甘露) sent by the 'Jinju Mami'—exactly the same as the stories my mother told me when I was a child."
A Witness Speaks
Offer the Whitest Hada to the Soldiers of the People
■ Doji Ciren, Secretary of the Wayue Village Party Branch, Karuo District, Changdu City, Tibet
I don't have much education—most of my Mandarin I learned from the comrades in the unit. Although I heard the elders talk about the "Jinju Mami" from the time I can remember, it wasn't until the unit moved in beside our village that I truly understood what the "Jinju Mami" are like.
When the unit first came to the village and said they wanted to help with construction, I didn't take it very seriously. I know Wayue Village's conditions too well—high altitude, thin soil, remote roads, generations living off yaks. Even the Party members' own lives were tight—how could they lead the people? The herders even more so only knew how to tend cattle, feeling that a good life belonged to other people and would never come to them.
The comrades from the unit came to talk with me, and they didn't say anything grand—they talked about specific things: How does the branch normally deliberate on matters? Is it far for the children to go to school? Besides raising yaks, what else can everyone do? I couldn't answer a single question. They were unhurried, analyzing things with me point by point. Only then did it dawn on me that they were helping us think through ideas and find solutions.
Seven years now. If you ask me what the biggest change has been from having the "Jinju Mami" as neighbors, my answer is: it's not how much money has been earned, but that people's spirit and drive (心气) have changed. Before, everyone felt that life was just going to be this way. Now every household is thinking about what else they can do and how they can earn a bit more. Why? Because the unit blazed a trail for us and let us see a future worth striving for (奔头).
I've been branch secretary for over ten years. Before, I thought the village was poor because the foundation was thin and conditions were bad. Now I understand that what was most lacking was not money, but a surge of energy (一股子劲) and a road that could actually be walked. What the unit helped us with was precisely these things. The elders say the "Jinju Mami" are bodhisattva soldiers who relieve suffering, and you must offer them the whitest hada. Today, I too want to offer this hada—a symbol of our reverence—to our soldiers of the people.
Page illustration by: Hu Shuo