Reporter's Notes | One Man's Battle Hymn, One Generation's Epic

That night I was on the evening shift. After sending out the final main dispatch in the "Getting Close to Wang Ji" series, it was already 3 a.m. by the time it went to press. From that point on, having gone through the reporting, writing, editing, and filing, I too had experienced an immersive, continuous, closed-loop battle (闭环战斗).

Throughout the entire process, my heart was filled with a sense of being moved, as if I had charged alongside Wang Ji, held the line alongside him, made my confession alongside him. We also often felt fortunate — fortunate to have taken part in documenting the life of a military scientist who never broke his halberd (永不折戟).

Child prodigy. Research luminary. Critical-condition notice. High-level amputation. Return to his post. Wang Ji's life reads like a screenplay compressed to the point of distortion. I had heard something of Wang Ji's story before, but only by getting close to Wang Ji do those words — at once concrete and abstract — begin to awaken one by one, growing flesh and bone, growing edges and corners, growing a weight that cannot be ignored.

During the days of reporting, four images kept surfacing in my mind: the halberd (戟), the wheelchair, the high ground (高地), the Milky Way (银河).

The "halberd" is the name his parents gave him, carrying the plain hope of "grasping the halberd to defend the state (执戟以卫社稷)." That name seems like a lifelong military order — or a command that must be executed — and Wang Ji has carried it out with his entire life. Otherwise, he would not have said, after surviving against all odds: "As long as my mind can still think and my hands can still move, I will not stop."

The "wheelchair" is his inseparable companion, and more than that, his battle chariot. The tracks left by the wheelchair, line after line, record Wang Ji's tenacious struggle after life dealt him its great blow, and fix in place the charging posture (冲锋姿态) that has never changed.

The "high ground" is the standard of excellence set for this place by the supreme commander, and it is also the position Wang Ji has held. "In any field, if you want to stand firm, you must first stand up in spirit." He remembers those words his mentor Chen Huowang often said in those early years. Now he frequently tells his students: "On the battlefield of scientific research, only those who dare to fight with bayonets can hold their position and stand atop the high ground."

The "Milky Way" (银河) is the name of the National University of Defense Technology's (国防科大) supercomputer — a spiritual totem for a whole generation of people, and the furnace in which Wang Ji was forged. "Every detail here seems to tell you: great hopes have been placed in you, and you must produce results." "I am a star in the Milky Way; the Milky Way spirit illuminates me, and I too must strive to shine my own light." As the reporting deepened, we came to understand more and more that these declarations, one after another, are Wang Ji's — as a "Milky Way person" (银河人), a "Tianhe person" (天河人) — profound and enduring vow to the motherland, to the era, and to this high ground.

Indeed, walking through the campus of the National University of Defense Technology, you feel that certain sounds, certain images, have diffused into the air and long since become part of the very act of breathing. Spend enough time here, and without anyone having to teach you, you know what must be let go and what must be held fast.

During the reporting, we once tried to ask him, "Does it hurt?" — but in the end we never asked. Because in his presence, any question about "suffering" feels frivolous. At age twenty-two, in his application to join the Party, he wrote: "My path of growth has been relatively smooth; I have not personally experienced the tempering of hardship and setbacks. I am resolved… no matter what difficult or trying circumstances I face, never to retreat (绝不退缩)."

Twenty-two years later, fate pushed that "hardship and difficulty" in front of him. He caught it with half a body, and has been holding it for thirteen years.

When writing the pieces, we cut all the lyrical passages. The details were already enough: the rows of wet footprints on the floor, the yellowed shift-rotation chart on the living room wall, the tears that burst from a colleague's eyes when he embraced him, and the cry of pain he has never once uttered in front of anyone.

Wang Ji — never breaking his halberd (永不折戟). Those six characters are not our summary. They are the answer he has written for himself — with half a body, with line after line of highly trustworthy code (高可信代码), and with every single day of thirteen years.

Four images ultimately gave rise to four dispatches — "Wang Ji: Never Breaking the Halberd," "The Charge from a Wheelchair," "Holding the High Ground," and "A Confession Beneath the Milky Way" — but in truth they all address the same proposition: How does a person, under the crushing blows of fate, still maintain a charging posture? How does a military scientific researcher, on the new journey of the new era, answer the call of the mission to strengthen the military (强军使命)?

There are always certain hidden threads in fate that make you feel that, in some unseen way, there is an arrangement, a bond, a mission you must fulfill.

Thirteen years ago, that summer, on the occasion of the National University of Defense Technology's 60th anniversary, I received an assignment to report at the university. That time I stayed for nearly ten days as well, completing two dispatches: "Vision: Transcending Through Innovation" and "Genes: Inherited Through Shaping."

It was summer vacation at the time. Walking between the "Milky Way Building" (银河楼) and the "Tianhe Building" (天河楼) on the university campus, each time I was stirred and moved by the stories of charging and holding the line on this high ground, I did not know that another life-or-death charge was unfolding at Xiangya Hospital a few kilometers away. At that time, Teacher Wang Ji had already undergone numerous surgeries, large and small; at that time, he was throwing everything he had into repelling the assault of his illness.

Thirteen years have passed. He not only held the high ground of fate — he and his comrades together stormed even higher peaks, causing the elevation of this high ground to keep rising.

Thirteen years. This scientist who works every day with zeros and ones has made no small number of breakthroughs from zero to one. And all of it he accomplished from a wheelchair.

This is an unbelievable life story. But if you go deep into this campus and listen to more stories, you will come to believe: everything is also entirely natural. This high ground has been built up from one legend after another, and from it, more legends naturally grow.