Above the Ruins, the Military Flag Flies High
■ Qiu Jichen
Weathering the Storm Together (oil painting, collection of the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Museum) — by Ma Yuan, Zhao Hongwei, Zhu Xuebin, and Zhang Wenbin
Fifty years have passed in the snap of a finger. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Tangshan earthquake relief effort, I made a special trip from Beijing to Tangshan. Walking through the military barracks and the urban and rural landscape where I had worked for eighteen years, I felt both a sense of strangeness and freshness, and an overwhelming surge of emotion.
Tangshan — this heroic city that rose from the ruins of the great earthquake — has now lifted its head and set out on a new journey of development. It is a nationally designated strategic industrial pillar, a comprehensive manufacturing hub, and a national-level logistics gateway for opening to the outside world; it is the economic leader of the Bohai Rim economic circle and a model city for integrated land-sea development; it also ranks first in per-capita economic output in Hebei Province and is Hebei's only city with a GDP exceeding one trillion yuan. Were it not for the towering earthquake memorial monument and the solemnly standing earthquake memorial museum at the center of Tangshan, along with a few preserved earthquake ruins, many people would never connect this thriving modern metropolis with the devastating earthquake that struck fifty years ago.
At the time of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, my unit — the "Taiyuan Campaign City-Scaling Vanguard Regiment" — was a field army unit garrisoned in the urban district of Tangshan. As the head of the propaganda section, I was at once a survivor who had escaped death, a firsthand witness who participated in the entire earthquake relief effort, a propaganda reporter covering the disaster relief work, and a builder of the new Tangshan. Coming to Tangshan now, I did my best to search out the former sites of the regimental command post and the various battalion and company garrisons. The vivid scenes of earthquake relief work gradually came alive in my memory, and the regiment's blazing red military flag seemed to flutter before my eyes once more.
I had lingered in the regimental history museum rebuilt after the earthquake, gazing fixedly at those flags that bore the record of glory and history. Two of them captivated me most: one was the honorary banner "Taiyuan Campaign City-Scaling Vanguard Regiment," awarded by the 20th Army Corps — on April 24, 1949, during the assault on Taiyuan, our regiment was the first among more than one hundred participating regiments to plant the red flag atop the city walls; the other was the honorary banner "Earthquake Relief Self-Rescue and Rescue Vanguard Regiment," awarded by the 66th Army — during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, our unit, situated in the most severely devastated area and itself badly damaged, threw itself actively into the rescue and relief effort, and stood out among nearly one hundred regimental-level units participating in the disaster relief.
Memories surged forth, and the sound of that military flag — the one that had once brought hope to the disaster area — snapping in the wind echoed in my ears once more. The immense power it embodied, the power to overcome disaster and rebuild homes, transcended time and space and struck straight to the heart.
I
At 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976, a devastating earthquake suddenly struck Tangshan. In a matter of seconds, the earth split open: roads collapsed, bridges broke, the city was destroyed. The regimental headquarters office building, where we were stationed in the heart of the disaster zone, was instantly leveled to the ground. I clawed my way out of the rubble and ran toward the film team of our propaganda section, which was quartered in the main auditorium. I quickly joined the political department secretary Sun Xuejiang and others to rescue the film team leader Guo Huiguang and projectionist Li Yancheng, then rushed back to the office building to continue the rescue work.
At that moment, all nine regimental leaders had been buried. One deputy regimental commander perished. As soon as the regimental leaders were freed, they gathered without prior arrangement at the flagpole in front of the office building. Political Commissar Jia Chunxiang, injured in the waist, lay in a wheelbarrow; Regimental Commander Shan Huashan, his head wrapped in bandages, sat in a jeep. They convened the first emergency enlarged Party committee meeting after the earthquake, established a rescue and relief command post, and rapidly deployed earthquake relief operations. Chief of Staff Wang Shichang, acting on the meeting's directives, quickly issued a series of orders: dispatch one company to report to the East Mining District Party committee and district government; dispatch one company to guard the treasury; dispatch one company to provide security for eighteen key sites including banks, shops, and grain warehouses in the East Mining District; all remaining companies to deploy immediately and rescue civilians on the spot.
From that day forward, the Five-Starred Red Flag — which had previously been raised and lowered daily — flew continuously atop the tall flagpole in front of the headquarters office building, becoming the "backbone" (主心骨) guiding officers and soldiers forward and a witness to the unit's earthquake relief work.
Our unit had been garrisoned in the Tangshan-Qinhuangdao area since returning from the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, and had long enjoyed the care and affection of the local people. Now that the people of our garrison area had been struck by the earthquake, the officers and soldiers saw it and felt it in their hearts. The entire regiment mobilized urgently. From villages to towns, from the nearest Nanchang Brigade and Shuiyu Commune, to the Kailuan Zhaogezhang and Tangjiazhuang mining areas, from Guye railway station to the district Party committee seat at Linxi — throughout the streets and lanes of an area spanning more than fifty square kilometers, the figures of soldiers risking their lives to rescue civilians were everywhere. On the day of the earthquake alone, the regiment rescued 819 civilians and did everything possible to resolve the food and shelter needs of more than 2,300 displaced residents.
On the parade ground of the barracks after the earthquake, injured civilians in need of treatment lay everywhere. Medical team leader Xu Mingquan's foot, crushed and bleeding, went untreated — he would not spare even a drop of mercurochrome for himself. Medic Liu Daxu three times risked his life crawling into the collapsed medicine warehouse to retrieve supplies, all of which were used to treat injured civilians. Food had become a dire problem. The regimental command post directed each company's kitchen squad to set up large cooking pots and prepare meals for civilians using rice and flour salvaged from the rubble. The kitchen squads of the 2nd Battalion's machine-gun and artillery company, the guard and communications company, and the regimental artillery company cooked meal after meal throughout the day — yet the officers and soldiers did not eat a single bite themselves, giving everything to the injured civilians. The local people praised them: "In times of peril you see true character — the People's soldiers are the ones you can count on!"
II
On the night of the 29th, our regiment received instructions from higher command: except for a small number of personnel left to guard the barracks, all companies were to urgently move from the East Mining District to the central urban area of Tangshan, taking responsibility for earthquake relief operations in the area bounded by Fenghuang Mountain to the east, Weiguo Road to the west, Airport Road to the north, and Xinhua Road to the south. Early on the morning of the 30th, the entire regiment moved into its designated positions. The newly established command post was in reality nothing more than a few military tents, pitched on a stretch of rubble that had been the Tangshan Coal Mining Medical College. The first thing Regimental Commander Shan did after the command post was set up was to have headquarters personnel plant a military flag at the most conspicuous point of the broken walls and ruined buildings, so that officers, soldiers, and disaster victims coming to attend meetings or conduct business could see the command post from a great distance.
News of the Tangshan earthquake spread like a silent order. Four officers and eighteen soldiers from the regiment who were away on home leave all returned to their units ahead of schedule, without any prior arrangement. Tang Jinsheng, a soldier from Hubei Province in the 2nd Battalion's machine-gun and artillery company, had just arrived home on leave on the 28th. Early on the morning of the 29th, he heard that a massive earthquake had struck Tangshan. He persuaded his parents and immediately set out to return to his unit. Unable to buy tickets along the way, he took trains when he could and caught rides on buses when available. When he reached Tianjin and found no transport, he walked more than one hundred kilometers back to his unit, eating only three meals in five days. Not knowing where his company was, he headed toward wherever he saw a military flag flying. On the day he returned, he threw himself into earthquake relief without a moment's rest.
After entering the central urban area of Tangshan, rescuing lives still surviving in the rubble became the top priority for the relief troops. The regiment arranged for officers and soldiers to use the limited listening equipment available, going deep into dangerous collapsed buildings to search for survivors; other officers and soldiers called out loudly across the rubble, pressing their ears to the ground to listen carefully, and the moment any sign of life was detected they threw themselves into the rescue without regard for their own safety. Dou Yongping, a new soldier and Party member in the 2nd Company, crawled into a collapsed building three times to rescue veteran worker Li Haishen and his family of seven. The first time, he pried open a window and rescued Li Haishen's four sons. The second time, he broke open a hole through the roof and crawled in, pulling Li Haishen out. When he learned that Li Haishen's wife and granddaughter were still buried, and was about to crawl back inside, an aftershock struck. Li Haishen grabbed his hand and said: "You've already saved five of my family — don't throw yourself in too!" Dou Yongping broke free from Li Haishen's grip, crawled back into the building, and rescued the old woman and the child, holding up a patch of clear sky for people in peril with his own flesh and blood.
Most unforgettable of all was the 1st Company's race-against-death rescue of the child Bai Haiming. Early in the morning of August 3rd, just after 6 o'clock, a soldier heard the faint cries of a child from beneath a dormitory building of the Coal Mining Medical College. The 1st Company immediately assembled and rushed to the scene, launching the rescue under the command of Company Commander Zhang Junyou. Fearing they might injure the child further, the soldiers dared not use shovels and switched to digging with their hands. At that moment, a concrete prefabricated slab began to tilt and slide downward; Squad Leader Liu Dong braced it with his shoulder and held on with all his strength. A brick pile weighing several hundred jin began to shift, creaking and groaning, liable to tumble down at any moment. Soldier Jin Guoqiang threw his body against the brick pile to hold it back. After more than fifty minutes of intense effort, Bai Haiming — who had been trapped for 147 hours — was finally rescued.
Throughout the days of earthquake relief, wherever rescue troops were present, military flags flew — even at the most grueling and exhausting sites where bodies were being cleared and buried.
After the Tangshan earthquake, temperatures remained persistently high, and the bodies of the victims decomposed rapidly; a suffocating odor pervaded the entire city. Acting on orders from the earthquake relief command, each company of the relief troops was assigned responsibility for specific streets, with the task of completing the clearance and burial of bodies within two days. This was an extraordinarily arduous and unusual mission. Due to the constraints of the situation, only a very small number of people could wear gas masks; most officers and soldiers wore face masks soaked in liquor, and some had no masks at all, and could only seal their sleeves and trouser legs with plastic sheeting before jumping into the burial pits. In just seven days, our regiment alone completed the transfer and burial of 3,681 victims' remains. This act of valor, bearing immense grief and extraordinary courage, is now preserved in photographs in the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Museum, deeply embedded in the collective memory of the earthquake relief effort.
In the early period after the earthquake, Tangshan's grassroots organizations had collapsed. Basic daily necessities such as grain, flour, cooking oil, and vegetables for the civilian population were distributed under a "rationing system" (供给制), issued uniformly by the troops. From morning to night every day, crowds of people collecting supplies pressed around the newly erected military tents. In the temporary encampments cordoned off by the companies, some elderly people and children even slept close to the relief troops at night. The people of the disaster area all said: in Tangshan, as long as we can see the military flag, our hearts are at ease — it gives us a sense of security.
The earthquake had destroyed many everyday items. Radios and televisions were unusable; broken bicycles piled up throughout the streets and lanes; people had nowhere to go even for a haircut. The "1st Company of Great Merit" (大功一连), with its glorious history, responded urgently to the people's needs and took the lead in opening Tangshan's first post-earthquake community service center on Jianshe Road, complete with a barbershop, a repair station, and a drinking water point. One elderly widow in her sixties had all her household utensils destroyed. Without cooking implements, even when grain and vegetables were issued to her, she could not prepare food. After members of the repair team learned of her situation, they visited her home twice to repair her cooking utensils. The old woman said with deep feeling: "The People's soldiers are truly good — I will never forget the beloved Liberation Army." According to incomplete statistics, the regiment provided haircuts to 3,975 people, repaired 1,857 bicycles, and repaired 4,931 cooking utensils.
III
After the Tangshan earthquake, under the firm leadership and unified deployment of the Party Central Committee, "whatever Tangshan needs, the whole country will provide" — supplies flowed continuously into the disaster area. However, as earthquake relief deepened and some production in the disaster area partially resumed, the previous "rationing system" model — which had relied primarily on relief troops to distribute daily necessities — could no longer meet the living needs of the population. At the same time, some of Tangshan's grassroots organizational structures were gradually being rebuilt. Against this backdrop, bringing the commercial system into play and getting goods into market circulation channels as quickly as possible became another urgent task for ensuring the livelihoods of disaster-area residents — following the resolution of the most pressing problems of food, drinking water, and medical care.
The concerns and needs of the people were the responsibility of the relief troops. In our regiment, the first to keenly perceive this problem and put it on the agenda was Yang Xiucheng, director of the regimental political department. On August 5th, Director Yang led me and staff officer Chen Bohe to the 3rd Battalion, which was stationed at the Tangshan Department Store, to conduct an investigation. The person then presiding over the 3rd Battalion's earthquake relief work was Deputy Battalion Commander Zhang Xiande, who had already been designated for demobilization. After the earthquake, with the battalion's political instructor dead and the battalion commander injured, he had stepped forward to organize the unit's self-rescue and the rescue of civilians in the garrison area. On the morning of the second day after the earthquake, someone came from his home village — only six kilometers from the barracks — to tell him that four of his family members had perished. But he resolutely sent the visitor home, volunteered to lead his troops to Tangshan's urban area for disaster relief, and when the route passed by his own village, he did not stop to go home even for a moment. While conducting rescue operations at the department store in Tangshan's new urban district, his sister's home was nearby, yet he had no time to look in on her. When he learned that his deceased sister was about to be buried, the regimental leadership told him to go and take a look; he said, "Right now saving the living is what matters," and never left his combat post.
In conversation with Deputy Battalion Commander Zhang Xiande and Deputy Political Instructor Wang Wenkui, Director Yang raised the question: what would it be like if a simple department store were built and opened for business right now? After everyone discussed it back and forth, they unanimously agreed that disaster victims urgently needed daily necessities and that a store should open as soon as possible to ensure supply. They then worked together to study a plan for constructing a simple commercial building; Deputy Battalion Commander Zhang also made detailed arrangements for building materials, merchandise, and the use of manpower. Director Yang asked when it could open. Deputy Battalion Commander Zhang thumped his chest and said: one week! Director Yang said: I'll give you four days at most. That afternoon, Director Yang returned to the regimental headquarters and reported the situation to the regimental commander and other leaders, receiving unanimous support.
The 3rd Battalion's officers and soldiers worked in three shifts, fighting continuously for four days and nights, and finally built Tangshan's first post-earthquake simple commercial building, which was immediately handed over to local authorities for operation. The regiment inscribed a plaque for the store reading: "What fear have we of earth shaking and mountains trembling — even with Mount Tai pressing down, we will not bend our backs" (地动山摇何所惧，泰山压顶不弯腰). A Five-Starred Red Flag was specially planted atop the store.
News that the first store was about to open spread quickly throughout all of Tangshan. On August 10th, the store officially opened. The shelves were fully stocked with everyday necessities of every kind, and people rushed to come, filling the store inside and out. Many people looked up at the Five-Starred Red Flag fluttering in the wind and shed tears of excitement. That day, former Beijing Military Region Deputy Commander Xiao Xuanjin, who was in Tangshan directing earthquake relief operations, happened to drive past and joined the crowd gathered around the store. He said to the staff members beside him: this is a truly wonderful thing — like sweet rain falling in a great drought — and asked which unit had built it. Upon learning it was the 589th Regiment of the 66th Army, he offered repeated praise: "Good, good!"
IV
Not long afterward, the earthquake relief command issued orders requiring relief troops at all levels to mobilize urgently to solve the problem of winter housing for the civilian population. Time was short and the task was heavy. Relief troops worked around the clock, racing against time to build simple housing, ensuring that disaster-area residents could move in before the cold set in at the end of November and have a good first winter after the earthquake.
But how would our soldiers know how to build houses? Yet the needs of the people in the disaster area were orders. Each company hired a number of local technical personnel and set up on-site teaching and training classes. Soon the battle to build simple housing was underway; red flags flew above the construction sites, presenting a scene of intense activity. After more than a month of effort, rows of simple houses stood along the streets of Tangshan. Our regiment alone built 1,816 rooms and constructed more than 7,400 square meters of buildings for units including the Tangshan New Urban District Department Store, the hardware and local products retail outlet, and the workers' hospital.
The military loves the people; the people support the military. The contributions made by our unit — garrisoned in Tangshan's urban district — during the earthquake relief effort received the highest recognition from the Party and the people. The Central Military Commission awarded the regiment a collective second-class merit citation; the 66th Army awarded the regiment an honorary banner; the former Beijing Military Region awarded the 1st Company the honorary title "Model Company in Earthquake Relief" (抗震救灾模范连). Across the regiment, one company and five platoons were awarded collective second-class merit citations; two battalions, three companies, six platoons, and fourteen squads were awarded collective third-class merit citations; fourteen individuals were awarded second-class merit citations, seventy-two were awarded third-class merit citations, and 384 received commendations.
On October 29th, we victoriously completed the earthquake relief mission and returned to barracks. A decorated float, fashioned from a Liberation-brand truck, led the convoy. The float flew the brilliant "Earthquake Relief Self-Rescue and Rescue Vanguard Regiment" banner; each company followed behind, all of them flying their merit-citation flags high on their military vehicles. Civilians who had heard the news rushed to gather, surrounding the military vehicles so tightly that passage was impossible. We had no choice but to stop and start repeatedly. That scene, that genuine emotion, moved people to tears.
Fifty springs and autumns have passed since the Tangshan earthquake. Walking through the streets of Tangshan today, gazing at the bustling prosperity throughout the city, I feel boundless comfort and satisfaction. When we participated in the earthquake relief back then, was it not precisely so that the people of Tangshan could have a happy today? The days and nights of earthquake relief have become the past; the great earthquake-resistant spirit (抗震精神) created by the soldiers and civilians of Tangshan has settled into a precious spiritual legacy.
Standing before the memorial wall for victims of the Tangshan earthquake, my gaze moved across the densely packed names, searching for the officers and soldiers of our unit who had perished and the heroes who had given their lives in the earthquake relief effort. After a long while, I bowed deeply toward the memorial wall. Stepping into the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Museum, I studied intently each photograph and each artifact. And among the thousands upon thousands of exhibits, what still seized my gaze most firmly was that brilliant red military flag. Facing this flag steeped in hot blood, I raised my hand and solemnly rendered a military salute.
That earthquake relief struggle, which stirred the mountains and rivers with its heroic spirit, has been written into history. The Party and the military will not forget it; the mountains and rivers of this land will remember it forever; and the people of Tangshan, who lived through the disaster, have long since woven this memory into their bloodlines, to be passed down from generation to generation.