From 'Landlubber' to Elite Rescue Swimmer: He Embodies the Fighting Spirit of a Naval Soldier

From 'Landlubber' to Elite Rescue Swimmer

■ Lou Weijun, An Nancun

Early summer. A sea area in the Yellow Sea. Waves surge, sea wind howls.

"Rescue swimmer, enter the water!" At the command, Du Jiaxiang leaps from the ship's rail.

The icy seawater closes over his head. He regulates his breathing and, pushing against swells nearly one meter high, swims with all his strength toward the target—fifty meters away, a dummy simulating a person who has fallen overboard bobs with the waves.

The swells slap his face; every time he lifts his head to breathe he must pick exactly the right moment. Following the rhythm of the waves, Du Jiaxiang strokes hard, threading through crests and troughs.

As he closes on the target, he rolls to one side, hooks the dummy with one hand, drives his legs to kick, and tows the "casualty" back toward the ship's rail. The entire sequence is clean and precise, without a single wasted movement.

As a core member of the Navy vessel Xihu's water rescue program, Du Jiaxiang has honed these movements through repeated training until they are second nature. From a young man once afraid of water to an elite rescue swimmer capable of completing rescues in severe sea conditions, his path of growth was forged through swallowing mouthfuls of water again and again, fighting the waves again and again.

The first time he encountered swim training in recruit company, this young man from Weifang, Shandong, made a fool of himself because of his fear of water: the moment he got into the pool, he panicked, thrashing his arms and legs and gulping down mouthful after mouthful.

In the days that followed, he watched his fellow recruits go from flailing to finding their form in the water, while Du Jiaxiang still clung to the pool's edge, unable to let go. He sank into deep anxiety: if he was afraid of water, could he ever be a good naval soldier?

Only by daring to face difficulties head-on can difficulties be resolved. The next time he got in the water, Du Jiaxiang worked first to let himself float, feeling the buoyancy of the water supporting his body. The surrounding noise was shut out by the water, leaving only the sound of his own breathing. In that moment, he suddenly felt the water was not so frightening.

To find a sense of comfort with the water, after training he asked the physical training instructor to take him for extra practice in treading water and breathing. Back in the barracks, he buried his face in a washbasin and timed himself with a stopwatch—15 seconds, 20 seconds, 40 seconds—until he was no longer afraid of the feeling of oxygen deprivation.

The four movements of the breaststroke—"draw, turn, kick, and squeeze" (收翻蹬夹)—he broke apart and worked through one by one: the angle of drawing the legs, the range of turning the feet, the explosive power of the kick, the timing of squeezing the legs together. He chased down the physical training instructor to confirm every detail. At night, lying in bed, he still practiced the motions under his blanket. A fellow recruit told him: "You were kicking your legs in your sleep." He smiled ruefully: "No choice—just have to keep practicing."

Perseverance pays off. Two months later, he passed the 400-meter breaststroke assessment in 8 minutes and 35 seconds and became one of the top swimmers in the unit.

After recruit company, Du Jiaxiang was assigned to the Navy vessel Xihu. There, he encountered water rescue training for the first time. At the time, the ship was selecting rescue swimmers, and the diving department head saw his swim scores from recruit company and his eyes lit up: "Come on, give it a try."

Although he had already passed the swim assessment in the pool, facing the open sea, Du Jiaxiang felt uncertain. At the first training session, wearing a dry suit and standing at the ship's rail, he looked down at the surging waves below and felt a flutter of apprehension. "At that moment I had just one thought: jump in and try," Du Jiaxiang recalled.

The instant he hit the water, waves surging from every direction hit him like an invisible giant hand, leaving him disoriented, and the dry suit felt as heavy as if it had been filled with lead, making every stroke feel extraordinarily laborious. The fifty-meter rescue distance took him a full five minutes to cover. Just as he reached out, a wave struck and pushed the dummy several more meters away. He was already so exhausted that his arms and legs had gone numb, and he could only watch helplessly as the target drifted off.

The harder the obstacle, the more resolute he became. After that training session, the diving department head asked whether he wanted to keep going. Du Jiaxiang nodded without hesitation.

"Water rescue isn't about who swims fastest—it's about who can hold on and swim steady in wind and waves. When a wave comes and you fight it head-on, you might take one, but can you take ten? When the wave pushes you back, go around it, use its energy." Squad leader Liu Yingwei shared his own experience.

From then on, whenever the vessel put into port for rest and maintenance, Du Jiaxiang asked his squad leader to take him to the swimming pool to train. "At sea, you have to abandon conventional swimming strokes and focus on the specialized techniques. You also have to adapt to the rhythm of the swells before you can find your direction forward." Liu Yingwei deliberately slapped the water beside him to simulate the rhythm of the swells. Through subsequent training, Du Jiaxiang gradually found his confidence.

On one occasion, the ship organized a diving training exercise, and Du Jiaxiang noticed that divers always raised one hand above their head when surfacing, to prevent their head from striking an obstacle on the way up. Connecting this to the rescue program, he suddenly thought: when performing rescue backstroke while holding a "casualty," the direction above your head is blocked from view and you simply cannot see obstacles. Could this diver's technique be applied to rescue swimming?

At the next training session, he began trying to raise his left hand above his head while swimming, sensing the water ahead as he went. Through repeated adjustments to the arm angle and stroke rate, he gradually found his balance. Some fellow soldiers didn't understand: "You're swimming just fine—why hold up a hand?" Du Jiaxiang explained: "With the hand raised, if I touch something I can detect it early. It's safer for both me and the 'casualty.'" This small technique, "grafted" from diving operations, was later adopted for use across the entire ship.

Water rescue tests physical fitness and technique, and demands precision above all. To master the movements for securing the dummy, Du Jiaxiang practiced repeatedly against the model—from fastening the rescue harness to connecting the tow line, drilling every step until it was second nature. At first, fastening the rescue harness once took him more than ten seconds. With enough practice, he could complete the securing in the instant a wave struck, relying on touch alone.

From a recruit afraid of water to an elite rescue swimmer riding the crest of the waves, Du Jiaxiang has, through leap after leap into the sea and stroke after stroke of hard swimming, embodied the fighting spirit of a naval soldier. He says that every training session is preparation so that at the critical moment, he can have one more measure of strength to lift a life. In the deep blue swells, he and his fellow soldiers together, with sweat and blood, stand guard over every hope of survival.