"As Long as I Work Hard, I Can Do Better" — A Profile of Xing Yingying, One of the Rocket Force's "Top Ten Sword-Sharpening Vanguard Fighters (十大砺剑尖兵)"
"As Long as I Work Hard, I Can Do Better" — A Profile of Xing Yingying, One of the Rocket Force's "Top Ten Sword-Sharpening Vanguard Fighters (十大砺剑尖兵)"
Xinhua News Agency Reporter Liu Yinuo
That spring, seventeen years ago, she wandered through a university campus, filled with uncertainty about the future.
This spring, seventeen years later, she stands beneath a missile launch frame, a combat vanguard fighter of the Rocket Force.
"One mission after another, one challenge after another — time passed in the blink of an eye. I am proud of who I am today." Looking back on seventeen years of military service, thirty-nine-year-old Xing Yingying said.
Through those seventeen years, she took root at a communications post on a missile position deep in the mountains, growing from a green student into a Rocket Force Staff Sergeant Third Class (三级军士长).
Through those seventeen years, she won championships at military skills competitions on multiple occasions, was selected four times for the All-Army "Hundred Communications Vanguard Fighters (百名信通尖兵)," and became one of the Rocket Force's "Top Ten Sword-Sharpening Vanguard Fighters (十大砺剑尖兵)."
Striving all the way, growing all the way — this quiet, bashful young woman with curved, smiling eyes became the most trusted senior squad leader (老班长) among her comrades.
Xing Yingying, a Rocket Force Staff Sergeant Third Class dressed in her formal uniform, her chest covered with honorary medals, salutes solemnly toward the military flag. Photo by Duan Decheng.
"Standing on the awards podium, my tears just fell"
In the autumn of her twenty-second year, Xing Yingying cut off her waist-length hair, gave up a stable job in Zhengzhou, and enlisted in the military.
"Why did you have to choose to join the army?" Xing Yingying told her mother: "I don't want to live a life where I can see the end from the beginning."
When she was assigned to her unit after basic training, she told the company commander and the specialist section leader: "I want to study the communications specialty — I've heard it's the hardest one."
She got her wish and entered the equipment room, where she was confronted with dense circuitry and all manner of specialized equipment.
"My head was spinning at the time," Xing Yingying said with a laugh. "But if other people can learn it, why can't I?"
She "chewed through" more than ten thousand characters of core professional key points and thumbed through thick textbooks until the page edges frayed. To practice soldering, she burned blood blisters on both hands with the soldering iron.
Driven by this tenacity, she underwent a transformation in the first major military skills competition of her military career.
It was a full-element military technical skills competition. The training team was full of hidden talent — past champions and veteran staff sergeants who had worked in the specialty for more than ten years were all there. People joked to her: "Don't drag the unit down, little girl."
Xing Yingying did not argue. She quietly buried herself in the training room, which was as stifling as a steamer.
In less than a month, she had used up two large coils of solder wire, and ten brand-new blades had been worn down to notched edges. She wrapped adhesive tape around her thumb in layer after layer, covering wounds that had cracked open repeatedly from long-term wire stripping.
On the day of the competition, facing dozens of randomly set sudden emergency situations (突发特情), Xing Yingying coiled cables thicker than her arm around her left forearm, and stripped, separated, cut, and soldered wire in one smooth, unbroken flow.
In the end, she took first place in all three categories — theoretical assessment, fault elimination, and equipment connection — broke an operational record at the base that had stood for many years, and brought home the all-around championship in the communications specialty.
"Standing on the awards podium, my tears just fell," Xing Yingying said.
She had won against herself.
"You have to reset yourself to zero, then zero again, before you can keep improving"
Resetting to zero (归零) is the mindset Xing Yingying has maintained year after year. "Honors belong to yesterday. When new equipment is fielded, new learning begins."
Faced with continuously iterating equipment and a battlefield environment changing by the day, learning is what gives Xing Yingying peace of mind.
At one information and communications competition, the moment officers and soldiers received the syllabus, they were caught completely off guard: an entirely new equipment system, an entirely new assessment logic, and operationally realistic emergency situations (实战化设置特情) that completely broke the traditional competition format, placing everyone on the same starting line.
"At the time we were all intimidated — it was all new material, and we had no idea where to begin," recalled platoon leader Cao Zhuang. "Squad Leader Yingying moved her bedding into the study room that very day, led us in studying, and went through it almost parameter by parameter."
During preparation, a fault emergency situation involving new equipment stumped the competitors. Xing Yingying broke the complex fault down into small modules, called the manufacturer's engineers over and over, and worked out every detail and underlying principle with complete clarity.
When the competition came, she led her team to perfectly handle what everyone recognized as the hardest problem of the entire event, and she herself took first place in an individual event.
"The most important thing is to learn to empty your own cup, so that new things can be poured in. Learning one more piece of knowledge today than yesterday, mastering one more operation — that is progress." This is what Xing Yingying teaches every comrade around her. She has mentored more than sixty communications backbone personnel in succession; more than ten have placed in military-level and above competitions, and multiple personnel have successfully been commissioned as officers or gained admission to military academies.
Whenever new equipment arrives, she is the first on the scene. When manufacturer technicians come to the garrison to conduct adjustments, she questions and records everything one by one — from equipment structure to fault prediction to emergency handling in the extreme environment of deep mountain terrain.
"A lot of your questions aren't fully covered in our technical manuals," a technician said, looking at her densely filled notebook.
"You are thinking about normal use of the equipment; I am thinking about whether it can be used well. The more I learn, the better I can complete the mission," Xing Yingying replied.
Her self-created "Three-Step Method for Rapid Fault Localization (故障快速定位三步法)" and other methods — developed from seventeen years of operational experience and competition accumulation — have effectively improved the team's fault-handling efficiency and have become a "teaching reference (教材)" for Rocket Force communications specialty training.
Xing Yingying conducts circuit soldering and maintenance on communications equipment. Photo by Duan Decheng.
"For three consecutive years, we met each other on the competition field"
More than ten expeditions to All-Army and Rocket Force competitions at various levels — there were high points of winning championships, and also low points of defeat when equipment was iterated.
"It seemed like placing had become inevitable — but how could anything be inevitable? There are only new challenges, one after another." After winning her first championship, Xing Yingying took on the weight of expectations.
"She told us that competitions are not about fighting for first place — they are about thoroughly resolving in the training ground the problems that might be encountered in actual combat," said Xiao Yang.
During one live-fire launch support mission, a torrential rainstorm suddenly struck the mountain area. With only twenty minutes remaining before the exercise was to begin, equipment suddenly triggered an alarm and audio-video communications were completely cut off.
"When something happens, don't freeze up — think first about how to solve it." Xing Yingying reassured the somewhat panicked new soldiers. In just three minutes, Xing Yingying precisely located and eliminated the fault, and the signal was instantly restored.
Don't be afraid when problems arise — as a mother at home, Xing Yingying always says the same thing to her child.
"My son has a fairly introverted personality, but he shows photos of my medals to his classmates," Xing Yingying said with a smile. "What I want to tell him is: the most impressive thing about his mother is not how many medals she has won, but that she has always been learning new things and always wanted to do better."
Her son is eight years old; her daughter is three. Xing Yingying and her husband can only go back to see them on weekends.
She and her husband Tian Chao met and came to know each other through competitions, and have moved forward side by side.
A photo of Xing Yingying (left) and her husband Tian Chao taken after the Rocket Force's Fourth Information and Communications Specialty Competition in August 2020. Photo by Duan Decheng.
"For three consecutive years, we met each other on the competition field," Xing Yingying said. "We went from opponents to lovers."
After marriage, the couple are stationed at two separate garrison areas more than a hundred kilometers apart, and the days they spend together are few.
The rare time they do meet is often in work settings — for instance, both being selected for the base competition team at the same time, and both standing on the awards podium together.
What binds them together, beyond affection and responsibility, is a shared pursuit. No matter how far apart they are, they understand each other and support one another.
Today, Xing Yingying still stands her post at the three-foot equipment console (三尺机台).
When asked about her hopes for the future, she gazed out the window at the unbroken mountain ranges: "I want to walk more steadily, and farther. As long as I work hard, I can do better."
The light in Xing Yingying's eyes is clear and unwavering.
Xing Yingying shows her honorary medals to young comrades and shares her experiences of growth in military service. Photo by Duan Decheng.
(Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, May 7)