Poplar Trees Take Root in the Gobi, Generation after Generation of Heroes Dedicate Their Lives to the Nation

The Poplars of the Space City

■ Yuan Hao

At the far end of the Hexi Corridor, deep in the heart of the Gobi, there is a city. It is not large, but its name resounds to the heavens—Dongfeng Space City. When I first arrived, what astonished me most was not the launch towers soaring into the clouds, but the tall, straight poplars standing everywhere throughout the city. They grow in rows and lines, their trunks thrusting upward into the sky like spears. Seen from a distance, their bearing and posture look exactly like Long March rockets coiled and ready to launch—a surging, upward force moving beneath the silence.

Those who guard the frontier seem to have a special attachment to the poplar. That song that once swept the nation, "Little White Poplar," was sung about a single poplar tree beside a border outpost. Here in this space city, that feeling seems to run deeper still, more fervent. Look at the trees in the city—every ring of their growth conceals a story. The thick ones must have witnessed the hardships of the first generation of founders; the slender ones are the new chapters written by those who came after. Without exception, they stand in perfect order. This is decidedly not the result of seeds scattered at random; it is the fruit of years of tending by generation after generation of builders.

One can well imagine that more than sixty years ago, when the first contingent marched into this expanse of Gobi desert and endless yellow sand, there was no such vitality between heaven and earth. That was 1958, and the nuclear threat of imperialism hung over the land like dark clouds pressing upon a city. The Party Central Committee made its decision: on this barren wasteland, New China would forge its own missile program. And so a force that had once struck terror into the enemy on the Korean battlefield was ordered to return home in secret and appeared on this vast Gobi plain. Leading them was Sun Jixian, a battle-hardened commander who had walked the Long March.

What hardship it was to take root in the Gobi. No houses, no water—everyone crammed into dugouts (地窝子), where even washing oneself was a luxury. It was poverty and blankness in the truest sense of the words. I think I understand why they came to love the poplar: this tree makes no pretense, bears no fragility, fears neither wind nor sand, can survive on a little water, and takes root wherever a patch of soil falls. Was this not the very image of the officers and soldiers themselves in those years?

In that small history museum, I saw them in old photographs: gaunt faces, cracked lips, and yet those eyes—startlingly bright. The old photographs recorded the slogans of that era: "The Chinese people have the will and the ability, and must in the not-too-distant future catch up with and surpass the world's advanced levels." I gazed at those photographs—those lean frames, those stubborn strokes of writing—and they were plainly like rows of freshly planted poplar saplings: as long as the roots were still in the soil, they believed without doubt that they would one day pierce the sky.

That is what they believed, and that is what they did. In 1960, the first "Dongfeng" surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missile lifted off from this place; in 1970, the first "Long March" rocket also set out from here. Entering the twenty-first century, the Shenzhou spacecraft has soared from this place time and again, carrying China's taikonauts to question the heavens. Through each of these thunderclaps and flashes of light that astonished the world, the poplars of the space city slowly grew into a dense forest. Precisely because these poplars shelter the land from wind and sand and improve the soil, other tree species that had never grown in the Gobi have at last found their home here one by one. Among the poplar groves, all manner of plants and trees have taken root and grown in succession; the Gobi that was once a wilderness of yellow sand is now a scene of lush green and teeming life.

Walking slowly along a road canopied by poplars, sunlight filters through layer upon layer of branches and leaves, casting dappled shadows on the ground. A clean wind passes through, and the leaves rustle softly, like the quiet murmuring of years gone by. Deeper along the road, the Dongfeng Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery stands solemn and still. More than 700 heroic forebears rest here in eternal sleep; their headstones stand like soldiers in formation, leaning side by side with the poplars beside them, like a silent and upright military array. A "Wall of Heroes' Names" stretching 180 meters has also been erected here; the wall tilts slightly upward, so that the forebears may look upon the sight of rockets ascending in flight. Several kilometers south of the cemetery lies the crewed space launch facility of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The roaring exhaust flames that have erupted from this place again and again illuminate the names of those forebears.

I stood before the memorial, raised my eyes, and saw the branches of the poplars straining with all their force toward the blue sky. At that moment, the sunlight was just right, and the tree shadows were gentle. Poplar trees take root in the Gobi, generation after generation of heroes dedicate their lives to the nation—unyielding and unceasing, the torch passed on without end. In the distance, another newly planted poplar stands tall against the wind. Within its rings, new legends will be inscribed. This is a land watered by the blood of heroes. The seeds of dreams and faith, borne on the exhaust flames of rockets, are pressing onward toward a deeper and more boundless sea of stars.