The Trajectory of Growth Must Be Calibrated by Ourselves, One Adjustment at a Time

Calibrating the Trajectory ■ Staff Sergeant Second Class Long Haisheng, a certain People's Armed Police detachment

Snow-capped mountains stretch on without end, and the long wind blows without cease since ancient times.

Here, the wind has never been gentle. It wraps itself in the sand and gravel of the Pamir Plateau, battering the earth day and night. It tests everything here — testing how deep the roots of grass and trees go, testing how strong the wings of the eagle are, and testing a soldier's conviction, perseverance, and backbone……

Just as dawn broke, the range was completely silent, and we arrived at our positions early. As I always do, I first reached into the inner pocket of my combat uniform and pulled out my field notebook, flipping through it and making entries. The cover had been worn white by wind and sand, and the page edges had curled into waves. Twelve years, more than 100,000 characters — preserved between those pages is the silent "dialogue" between me and the sniper rifle in my hands.

In 2021, I stood on a Pamir Plateau range for the first time. Before that, I had trained as a sniper in plains regions for seven years, and I considered myself thoroughly familiar with ballistics and wind direction. But upon arriving at the plateau, my past experience suddenly became invalid: the same firing stance, the same aiming fundamentals — yet the rounds I fired were erratic, the point of impact shifting left and right, with a maximum deviation of nearly half a meter.

The score from that evaluation was something I could not put out of my mind. The long wind of the Pamir had deflected more than just the trajectory — it had deflected the long-accumulated confidence of a sniper.

From that point on, I recorded in my notebook, one by one, the wind speed, wind direction, and temperature changes on the plateau. During every shooting training session, I lay prone in the snow, observed the environmental parameters monitored by instruments, and noted the time limit before fingers go numb in low-temperature conditions, the effect of breathing rhythm on trigger pull, and more. At an altitude of over 3,000 meters, lying prone for too long causes one's vision to go dark — so I would rest a moment before continuing to train; when my fingers were too frozen to hold a pen, I would breathe on them and rub them together, then keep writing……

During one training session, we were suddenly hit by a Force 8 gale. We held our positions for a full two hours, our faces covered in sand and grit, our eyelashes crusted with a layer of ice. The characters I wrote that day were crooked and scrawled, yet they became invaluable practical insights. Gradually, I seemed to understand the breathing of the snow mountains — the wind has a rhythm of rise and fall, and the rounds I fired gradually achieved stable accuracy. This notebook, soaked through with sweat, became a secret guide to growth that belongs to me alone.

When word came of the 2025 All-Army "King of Marksmen" Challenge, I signed up at the first opportunity. During the concentrated training period, I repeatedly pondered the data and reflections in my notebook, integrating each lesson learned into every firing stance and every trigger pull.

On the competition field, the terrain was unfamiliar, special situations arose one after another, and top competitors from all sides competed on the same stage. Having been repeatedly tempered by the wind and snow of the Pamir, my mind was exceptionally calm. In the long-distance rapid sniper event, I precisely captured the shooting window, fired decisively, and the shot rang out and the target fell; in the high-value target selection sniper event, I calculated precisely and responded with composure, achieving zero errors throughout. In the end, I posted outstanding scores and won the championship in both of these events.

Not long after returning to my unit, I became the detachment's chief sniper instructor. I often lend my notebook to my comrades to read, and I also encourage them to write their own field notebooks. I want them to understand one principle: no one's experience can be completely replicated, and no battlefield environment ever stays the same. As a sniper, only by personally experiencing all manner of complex weather conditions and terrain, and tempering oneself repeatedly through live-fire after live-fire, can one possess the capability and confidence to hit with a single shot.

The long wind of the Pamir never repeats the same path. The trajectory of growth, in the end, requires us to lie down ourselves in the wind and snow, and calibrate it one adjustment at a time.

(Compiled by Xiang Qingqing)