When an 18-Year-Old Post Meets 18-Year-Old Soldiers: This Is Their Answer to Youth
An 18-Year-Old Post, 18-Year-Old Soldiers
■ Mei Shixiong
At around 3 a.m. on May 21, I climbed onto Heixiazi Island for the third time.
This is the easternmost piece of land on the Chinese mainland. The officers and soldiers of the Eastern Extremity Post (东极哨所), a border defense company under the Northern Theater Command Army, greet the sun into the motherland every single day. At that moment, a faint glow had already spread across the horizon; in a few more minutes, the first ray of sunlight would leap from the surface of the river. The light in the watchtower shone like a star in the darkness, keeping watch over this land that greets the dawn before anywhere else.
The soldiers told me: the post turns 18 this year.
Eighteen years — enough for a Mongolian oak sapling to grow into a tree of full, spreading branches, and enough for a barren island to become an impregnable post. And when an 18-year-old post meets 18-year-old soldiers, that encounter across time is itself inscribed with answers about growth, about choice, about home and country.
Private Xu Chuandong will never forget the scene of his first guard duty.
It was in the early hours of a morning earlier this year. Heixiazi Island was still sleeping in boundless darkness, the temperature down to minus 35 degrees Celsius. Before he went on post, his squad leader checked his clothing several times over — cotton jacket, cotton trousers, cold-weather face mask, cotton gloves, cotton boots; not one item could be missing. But when he pushed open the door of the watchtower, he still felt a bone-piercing cold. He tried hard to straighten his back, wanting to stand as ramrod-straight as the veterans, but his body betrayed him with a faint trembling, his teeth chattering.
Time seemed to freeze. He kept checking his watch, but the hands seemed stuck in place. All he could do was quietly force his toes to move back and forth inside his boots to keep the blood circulating.
The sky shifted from pitch black to deep blue, then from deep blue to pale grey. A faint rose-red appeared on the eastern horizon. Xu Chuandong's heart suddenly beat faster. He knew: the sun was coming.
That rose-red grew brighter and brighter, as if someone had lit a lamp at the edge of the sky. At last, the first ray of sunlight leapt above the horizon, passed through the glass window of the watchtower, and fell on Xu Chuandong's face.
Xu Chuandong stood motionless at his post, but his eyes grew hot. In that moment, he stood at the easternmost point of the motherland, facing the first ray of sunlight, guarding the ten thousand lights of home behind him.
Xu Chuandong's first patrol coincided with the heaviest snowfall Heixiazi Island had seen since the onset of winter. The moment the unit stepped out of the garrison area, the wind hurled snowflakes straight into their faces. He stumbled along at the back of the column, each step requiring him to wrench his leg out of the snow before plunging it into the next drift. Suddenly his foot slipped and he pitched headlong into a snowbank, struggling several times without being able to get up. The squad leader turned back and grabbed his pack straps: "Get up!" He gritted his teeth and finally hauled himself out.
"How much farther?" he asked, gasping.
"Not far now," said the squad leader.
After nearly another hour of walking, the column finally halted. The squad leader crouched down and brushed the snow from a stone marker with his glove. The two vivid red characters — "中国" (China) — were revealed.
The squad leader handed him a brush soaked in red paint. He traced each stroke carefully, feeling as though the brush in his hand weighed a thousand jin. In that moment, all the cold and exhaustion were replaced by a solemnity he had never felt before.
Tian Chongzhan, two months younger than Xu Chuandong, is equally unable to forget his own first patrol. This young man from Shandong, who was admitted to Qingdao University of Technology in 2025, chose to defer his enrollment and enlist. He said: "If I waited until after university, I was afraid I wouldn't have the courage anymore."
In the blizzard, he brought up the rear of the column, nearly blown off his feet by the wind several times. The squad leader called from up ahead: "Keep up!" He gritted his teeth and inched forward, one step at a time. When he finally caught sight of that splash of red on the boundary marker, he suddenly felt that every hardship had been worth it.
Physical hardship was nothing, Tian Chongzhan felt; the trials of the spirit were the hardest to endure. On last year's Lunar New Year's Eve, the company organized a fireworks display. Multicolored light bloomed in the night sky, its reflection on the snow especially beautiful. Comrades laughed and joked; someone called out "Happy New Year," someone else recorded a video on their phone to send to family. Tian Chongzhan stood among them, watching the fireworks fill the sky, and suddenly felt a sting in his nose. In years past at this time, the whole family would sit together making dumplings, the house full of laughter. Now, around him were comrades he had only recently met, while his parents kept a cold and quiet home — they must be feeling it too. At that thought, his tears nearly spilled over.
Suddenly, a hand rested lightly on his shoulder. The squad leader had come to stand beside him without his noticing. He hastily wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. To his surprise, the squad leader said not a single word — he simply stood with him in silence, watching the fireworks bloom one after another in the night sky. That evening, when he returned to the dormitory, he found a bowl of steaming dumplings on his bedside table, with a small note beside it: "Chongzhan, we made pork and green onion dumplings — see if they taste like Shandong."
He took a bite. A little like his mother's, but not quite. Yet he felt these were the best dumplings he had ever eaten.
Beyond Xu Chuandong and Tian Chongzhan, many more 18-year-old youths are quietly blooming on this island.
Wang Zhenhao, a young man from Sichuan, set himself a countdown when he first arrived — "get through these two years and get out fast." He himself cannot say exactly when his thinking changed. In a letter to his parents, he wrote: "When personal growth and the peace of the motherland are bound together so closely, I feel an incomparable honor." And so "staying on" became his natural choice.
The moment he was assigned the designation "Eastern Extremity Guardian (东极卫士) No. 600," Ruan Chengkai from Fujian felt his heart pounding like a drum: "This number will be carried on forever, but No. 600 will always be mine."
Xie Feiyang used to love playing video games before enlisting; it was the light in the company's study room burning late into the night every evening that gradually settled his mind. Today, he has become a theoretical backbone (理论骨干) of the company.
These young people come from every corner of the country, but at the Eastern Extremity Post, they share a common name — Eastern Extremity Sentinels (东极哨兵).
On May 21, sunrise on Heixiazi Island came at 3:15 a.m. Beijing time. The moment the first line of rose-red appeared on the horizon, the entire company was already standing in neat formation. As the first ray of sunlight leapt from the surface of the river, the Five-Starred Red Flag rose slowly to the strains of the national anthem.
The most senior soldier at the post — Staff Sergeant First Class (一级上士) Lei Hui — stood in the front rank of the formation. Eighteen years ago, he stood in that same position and took part in the island's first flag-raising ceremony. Today, a group of 18-year-old young people stands at his side. Sunlight fell on the faces of the veteran and the new soldiers alike — on the veteran's face, 18 years of wind and frost had carved a steadfast resolve; on the new soldiers' faces bloomed the vitality unique to 18-year-old youth.
To the west of the post stands a lush grove of Mongolian oaks. It is the company's "Talent Grove" (人才林), where outstanding soldiers may plant a tree of their own. The tree Lei Hui planted back then has long since grown into full, spreading branches. The new soldiers do not yet have trees of their own, but they know that one day, they too will plant one here.
Tian Chongzhan says that when his service is complete, he will return to university to continue his studies — and when he finishes, he will come back to serve again. Xu Chuandong says he wants to become a squad leader and bring along the next crop of new soldiers. Wang Zhenhao says he wants to become a technical expert like Squad Leader Lei. Ruan Chengkai says he wants to be worthy of the designation "No. 600"…
Some say the frontier is an examination question for youth. Standing in the first ray of sunlight on Heixiazi Island, these 18-year-old young people have written their answers through their choices —
To guard the nation and the border is also to guard home; when the nation is at peace and home is at peace, the heart too is at peace.
This is the answer of the Eastern Extremity Sentinels.