Love Flows Through the "Galaxy" — Wang Ji Is One of Its Stars

Love Flows Through the "Galaxy"

■ Xu Xin, Xia Yuxuan; illustration by Chen Lei

The morning mist had not yet lifted when a window in the family residential quarters of the National University of Defense Technology lit up early.

It was another day for Wang Ji, a researcher at the university's College of Computer Science, to travel on business. Before long, his mother, Liu Guizhi, was pushing his wheelchair, slowly making her way through the corridor.

The sound of the wheelchair rolling across the floor was unusually distinct in the surrounding silence. Wang Ji sensed the ache his mother was hiding in her silence and said softly, "Mom, don't be like that. I always have to face it. I feel very fulfilled — isn't that a good thing?"

Liu Guizhi nodded, saw her son into the car, and watched until it disappeared around the bend.

In her lifetime, she had lost count of how many times she had watched him set off. Once it was to school, to the laboratory; now it is to business trips and meetings. Once he strode with great steps; now he sits in a wheelchair. But in Liu Guizhi's eyes, the direction her son heads has never changed.

From entering the former National University of Defense Technology just before the age of 14, to being appointed professor at 33, to confronting grave illness with ever-greater resilience — along the way, others saw the dazzling honors on his résumé, while his mother saw the wounds accumulating ever deeper on her son's body, and the flame in his heart that has never gone out.

As a child, Wang Ji was famously "mischievous" in the machine factory where his mother worked; before he even started school, a teacher had already placed him on a "watch list." Faced with the teacher's misgivings, Liu Guizhi remained calm and took her son to the teacher's home, solemnly giving her word: "Wang Ji is mischievous, but once he starts school he will certainly change, because he loves to learn."

Liu Guizhi had her reasons for confidence. At the time she was a mathematics teacher at the factory's night school, and she would sometimes bring Wang Ji along when she went to teach. After a few classes, she noticed that this "ringleader" who normally turned the residential quarters upside down would settle down the moment he entered the classroom — sitting up straight, eyes fixed on the blackboard, listening more attentively than some of the adult workers. Back home, Wang Ji would pick up a pair of chopsticks as a pointer and "lecture" at the wall, muttering to himself.

Liu Guizhi realized her son harbored a heart hungry for knowledge. One day, she solemnly asked him: "What is something on a person that no one can take away?" Wang Ji guessed several things, each met with a shake of his mother's head. Finally, Liu Guizhi gently tapped Wang Ji's small head and said: "The knowledge inside your mind."

Years later, lying in the intensive care unit with only his fingers able to move, Wang Ji would recall those words countless times — the knowledge inside your mind, no one can take it away. As long as his brain could still think and his hands could still strike a keyboard, he was still the man racing against code.

In the early 1980s, computers were still a rarity. To help her son choose a major, Liu Guizhi made a special trip to Changsha to "conduct an on-site investigation." When she returned home, she told Wang Ji: "We'll choose software."

She offered an analogy: "Suppose a piano is hardware — then the music is software. Beautiful music has infinite creative space."

His mother's advice was like a signpost, anchoring the course of Wang Ji's entire life. He entered the former National University of Defense Technology and spent decades cultivating a field that few had ventured into at the time: high-assurance software technology (高可信软件技术). Domestically developed operating systems, high-performance computing, information security — those invisible "compositions," one by one, were scored by him and his team, sounding out in the grand movement of China's national defense science and technology enterprise.

In 2013, Wang Ji suffered a sudden aortic dissection. To spare his parents excessive worry and fear, university leaders and colleagues concealed the situation from the two elders through a well-intentioned deception. Three months later, only after Wang Ji's condition had stabilized did mother and son speak for the first time.

Throughout those three months, Wang Ji's wife — herself a researcher at the National University of Defense Technology's College of Computer Science and a 2023 National March 8th Red-Banner Pacesetter (全国三八红旗手) — Huang Chun, stood guard over Wang Ji without fail. Because there was a young daughter at home, Huang Chun could only keep watch at the hospital during the day, rush home at night to care for their daughter, and appear again at the ward door first thing the next morning. Their neighbor Liang Yan and her family also voluntarily helped with picking up the child and looking after her daily needs. This neighborly watch allowed Huang Chun, even through the days of accompanying her husband and child, to continue shouldering the mission of a new-generation high-performance computing engineering project.

When Wang Ji's weak voice finally came through the receiver, Liu Guizhi gripped the handset as a thousand words churned in her heart, and in the end they resolved into a few calm sentences: "Son, there are plenty of people who are physically disabled but not in spirit (身残志不残)! If you cannot face it, others will only sigh and say: what a pity about that child; if you can face it, everyone will help you — give you a push!"

Wang Ji said: "Mom, I'll do as you say."

At the same time, university leaders sought out Liu Guizhi: "Auntie Liu, whatever requests you have, please raise them."

That day, she made only one request: "If Wang Ji's hands are intact and his mind is clear, I hope the organization will give him a good working environment."

In her heart, as long as Wang Ji survived, he could not simply lie in a hospital bed forever. Creating a space where he could continue to serve his country was worth more than anything else.

Wang Ji did not disappoint his mother's hopes. As soon as his condition showed the slightest improvement, he urgently demanded to return to his post. At that time, the high-assurance software technology research he had been pressing forward was at a critical uphill stage, with many core problems waiting for him to solve. To that end, the university specially arranged a ground-floor apartment for Wang Ji, and the road in front of the building, the building entrance, and the apartment door were all fitted with barrier-free modifications.

After returning to his post, Wang Ji threw himself into his work with remarkable tenacity. In 2015, he took the initiative to serve as chief technical expert on a key national defense project. In the years that followed, he traveled by wheelchair to review meetings and evaluation conferences across the country; at his busiest, he moved through three cities in a single week.

Yet fate's trials did not stop there. In 2021, due to kidney failure, he began receiving hemodialysis three times a week, four hours per session.

In the dialysis room, machines hummed. Wang Ji reclined against the head of the bed, a needle in his right arm, his left hand holding a phone to read papers — sometimes with a video academic conference running at the same time. The brown scars left by years of punctures were clearly visible on his arm.

Medical staff said they had never seen anyone work while undergoing dialysis. Wang Ji joked with those around him: "Three dialysis sessions a week — those are my 'rest days.'" Those who knew the truth understood that on these "rest days," he had almost never truly rested. The moment dialysis ended, he would head back to the laboratory or the conference venue as usual, as if those four hours were nothing more than an ordinary footnote in his schedule.

In January 2025, an incubated outcome of a key national defense project led by Wang Ji was awarded the first prize of the Military Science and Technology Progress Award (军事科学技术进步奖一等奖).

Over these years, the software technologies developed by Wang Ji and his team have been applied in fields including aerospace and major weapons systems. The collective to which he belongs carries a resounding name: the "Galaxy People" (银河人).

The Milky Way in the sky is formed by the convergence of countless stars; the earthly "Galaxy" is likewise formed by the wisdom and lifeblood of generation after generation of researchers. Wang Ji is one of those stars. His light comes from his mother's lifting hand, from the support of his wife and daughter, and from the collaboration of the entire team — just as his mother once said, "everyone will help you."

Through cold and heat, Wang Ji's wheelchair rolls along the paths of the campus. From that wheelchair, he continues to charge forward on the battlefield of scientific research. The lines of code written one by one by him and his team guard the smooth operation of the nation's great weapons systems — silent, yet powerful.