Correct Outlook on Political Achievement, Practiced in the Barracks | The Commissar Has an Electric Bicycle
The Commissar Has an Electric Bicycle
■ Tao Yongjun, Guo Bing, and PLA Daily Special Correspondent Wang Xuechao
The sun had just crept above the hilltops, and the morning mist had yet to lift from the land of Qi and Lu. Yuan Fei, commissar of a certain support detachment under the Shenyang Joint Logistic Support Center, finished morning exercises and rode his electric bicycle straight toward the No. 1 Sub-detachment's garrison.
No advance notice. No accompanying personnel. Yuan Fei rode alone down a country lane. The air carried the fresh scent of earth and vegetation, and riding into the light breeze, Yuan Fei felt as though he had melted into this beautiful stretch of hills and wilderness.
Before long, Yuan Fei arrived at the building of the No. 1 Sub-detachment. He parked his bicycle, kicked down the stand, and walked straight inside. The sound of rushing water came from the bathroom — officers and soldiers who had just finished a 5-kilometer morning run were washing up. Yuan Fei asked: "Is the water hot enough?"
Recognizing Yuan Fei's voice, several soldiers at the sinks replied: "Good morning, Commissar! The water temperature is just right — and there's hot water around the clock!" Their answer left Yuan Fei feeling quite gratified, and he could not help but recall the scene from his very first visit to the No. 1 Sub-detachment for an investigation.
Illustration: Fang Han
In October 2024, Yuan Fei took up his new post as commissar of the support detachment. The multiple sub-detachments under the detachment are dispersed across the mountains, each located between 3 and 10 kilometers from detachment headquarters; making a full circuit of all the sub-detachments means traveling more than 20 kilometers of mountain roads.
At the outset of his tenure, eager to familiarize himself with each sub-detachment as quickly as possible, Yuan Fei decided to go down to the front line for firsthand investigation, with the No. 1 Sub-detachment as his first stop. That day, before the vehicle carrying Yuan Fei had even entered the No. 1 Sub-detachment's compound, the sub-detachment's backbone cadres — who had been organizing patrol and warehouse inspections — heard the sound of a car and figured that "a leader has arrived," and quickly rushed over to organize the officers and soldiers into a formation to receive him.
During the subsequent investigation, Yuan Fei noticed that the soldiers seemed somewhat ill at ease. He understood: arriving by car had given everyone the impression that he put on official airs (官架子).
The first investigation had not produced the expected results, so Yuan Fei decided to change his approach. In the days that followed, he used the time before breakfast or after dinner to run all the way to the No. 3 Sub-detachment — the nearest one — for his investigations. Inside the garrison, Yuan Fei encountered many officers and soldiers on their morning or evening runs, and he would proactively join their groups, chatting with everyone as they ran together — from running tips to personal development to the sub-detachment's current situation. Before long, he had a clear picture of that sub-detachment's actual conditions.
The other sub-detachments, however, were not only farther from headquarters but also accessible only by rugged mountain roads; running there and back took far too long. Just as Yuan Fei was fretting over this, the sight of local villagers riding electric bicycles gave him a flash of inspiration: electric bicycles are light and fast, allowing him to come and go at will and save a considerable amount of time. And so, on the country lanes around the garrison, there appeared one more camouflage-clad figure on two wheels.
One weekend evening, Yuan Fei rode his newly purchased electric bicycle to the No. 1 Sub-detachment again. This time, no cadres came to meet him, and the garrison was entirely in its "natural state" (原生态). But he noticed something: although it was supposed to be the sub-detachment bathhouse's open hours, hardly anyone had come to bathe. Upon asking, he learned that the bathhouse was some distance from the sub-detachment's building, and every time officers and soldiers went to bathe they had to run back and forth — working up a sweat on the way there in summer, and ending up with ice crystals in their hair in winter.
Moreover, officers and soldiers reported that the hard water at the garrison caused the showerheads to clog frequently, and people would rather fill a washbasin in the bathroom and pour water over themselves than make the trip to the bathhouse. Yuan Fei got back on his bicycle and made a circuit of the other sub-detachments, finding similar situations everywhere.
"The bathhouse was built, yet the officers and soldiers don't want to go bathe — you really can't discover the underlying problem without seeing it for yourself on the ground." After getting a clear picture of the situation, Yuan Fei and the Party committee leadership studied the matter and decided to renovate the bathrooms in each sub-detachment's building into wet-dry separated bathroom suites (干湿分离的卫浴间). At the same time, they adopted suggestions from officers and soldiers and installed filters, motion-sensor lights, and other equipment in the bathrooms.
"Commissar Yuan's down-to-earth work style has given us a deep appreciation that going down to the troops for investigation means not only walking into the grassroots barracks, but also walking into the hearts of officers and soldiers," said the detachment commander. Since Commissar Yuan took office more than a year ago, he has not lit "three fires" (烧"三把火") or thrown "the first three kicks" (踢"头三脚") — instead, he has persisted in riding his bicycle deep into each sub-detachment's front line to find out the real situation, listen to the soldiers' voices, and work out countermeasures.
Last summer, Yuan Fei rode to a mountain warehouse for an investigation. Outside, the sun blazed and the temperature was approaching 40°C, yet inside the cave depot the temperature was only 13°C. Although he had changed into a heavy coat before entering, Yuan Fei still felt a bone-chilling cold. "Going in and out is like switching between fire and ice — it's extremely uncomfortable." Yuan Fei learned that when ammunition receiving and dispatching tasks arose, officers and soldiers going in and out to work simply had no time to change clothes, and over time many had developed rheumatism and arthritis.
Returning from the investigation, Yuan Fei proposed building a physical therapy room for each sub-detachment. The Party committee studied and refined his proposal, deciding to equip the therapy rooms with moxibustion, electrotherapy, cupping, and other devices. After the therapy rooms were built, the support detachment's medics went from sub-detachment to sub-detachment to demonstrate and teach; many soldiers learned common traditional Chinese medicine therapy techniques, enabling them to promptly relieve discomfort and reduce pain.
On one occasion, Yuan Fei rode to a sub-detachment to "push open the door and sit in on a class" (推门听课). Below the podium, the soldiers sat ramrod straight; on the podium, the sub-detachment commander had his head down, "reading" from the lesson plan. After class, Yuan Fei asked the soldiers what they had learned, and many could not answer.
When he then asked the sub-detachment commander, the commander also felt aggrieved: the sub-detachment's support tasks were heavy, and when he organized political education on his own he could only find lesson plans online and read from a script in class — naturally it was hard to resonate with anyone.
After Yuan Fei led the sub-detachment's backbone cadres in studying the problem, he suggested that when sub-detachments subsequently organized self-directed education (自主教育), they should conduct interactive exchanges and topic-based discussions (互动式交流、话题式讨论) around issues that officers and soldiers cared about, with the sub-detachment commander serving as moderator and guiding soldiers to come up to the front and speak their minds and share their reflections. This would both improve the quality and effectiveness of education and reduce the burden on sub-detachment commanders. "This approach works quite well and has already been rolled out across the support detachment. We place no time limit on education sessions, and topics are set independently by each sub-detachment," said Yuan Fei.
Today, in the time outside his office work — after morning exercises, after dinner — Yuan Fei persists in seizing every available moment to ride down to the sub-detachments, take a look around the garrison, have a casual chat, and experience daily life firsthand.
The light bicycle moves silently, reaching straight to the soldiers' hearts (轻骑无声，直抵兵心). Conducting on-site inspections of each sub-detachment's study rooms, gyms, and gymnasiums; experiencing the accommodation conditions in the family-visit quarters (来队家属房)… Yuan Fei brings the problems and difficulties he collects from the front line to Party committee meetings, driving the timely resolution of problems — renovating family-visit quarters, study rooms, and gyms; refurbishing the gymnasium and cinema; helping more than ten officers and soldiers resolve practical difficulties in marriage, relationships, and family matters. The officers and soldiers' drive and spirit for getting things done have grown ever stronger, and they have completed major tasks — including warehouse renovation and multi-service-branch joint storage and supply (多军兵种联储联供) — to a high standard. Last year, the support detachment was commended by the Shenyang Joint Logistic Support Center as an "Advanced Unit in Training Preparation for War" (练兵备战先进单位).
The bicycle frame has grown worn — and the sub-detachments have grown familiar. The tires have worn down — and the officers and soldiers have grown close. Over more than a year in post, Yuan Fei's electric bicycle has logged more than 2,000 kilometers. Calculated at 20 kilometers per round trip, he has made more than one hundred circuits among the sub-detachments.
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A Hundred Rides on a Light Bicycle to Resolve Soldiers' Hardships
■ Han Wei
One electric bicycle. More than 2,000 kilometers of mountain roads. More than one hundred passages through deep-mountain garrisons. Yuan Fei, commissar of a certain support detachment under the Shenyang Joint Logistic Support Center, has measured the grassroots reality with his own footsteps and listened to officers' and soldiers' needs with genuine sincerity — a vivid embodiment of what it should look like for Party member cadres to establish and practice a correct outlook on political achievement (正确政绩观).
The reason Commissar Yuan's story commands admiration is that he has cast aside official airs and formulaic routines. When he first took office and conducted investigations by car, what he heard were briefings from written materials and what he saw was "formation reception for inspection" — officers and soldiers were ill at ease, and the real situation was hard to find. When he switched to running and cycling, without the "entourage and fanfare" (前呼后拥), what he got his hands on was the grassroots reality: soldiers' difficulty bathing, the extreme temperature swings in the cave depot, the tedium of political education. One change of "vehicle" stripped away the official airs and brought back genuine feeling; it discarded the preset path and put the mass line (群众路线) into real practice.
A hundred rides on a light bicycle to resolve soldiers' hardships. This news story offers us an insight: a correct outlook on political achievement is not measured by how loudly slogans are shouted or how resolutely determination is declared, but is reflected in "down-to-earth" (接地气) investigation and in the hard work of "resolving soldiers' worries" (解兵忧). It is our hope that more leading cadres will follow Commissar Yuan's example — going in "in body" and also "in heart" (身入又心入), finding real problems and producing real solutions amid the "smell of earth and sweat" (泥土味和汗水味), and truly writing their political achievements into every brick and tile of grassroots construction and into the solid results of preparation for war and combat.