PAP Beijing Corps Mobile Fifth Detachment and Tibet Corps Tanggula Sub-unit Carry Out Paired Co-construction Activities

PAP Beijing Corps Mobile Fifth Detachment and Tibet Corps Tanggula Sub-unit Carry Out Paired Co-construction Activities——

Sincere Feelings Across Mountains and Seas, United Hearts Defending Home and Nation

■ Li Yongheng, Fan Peishuai, Yang Dakuan

Officers and soldiers pose for a group photo in front of the monument marking the world's highest railway altitude point. Photo by Zhou Jiang.

One is stationed in Beijing, safeguarding the peace of the capital; the other is rooted on the plateau, guarding the snow-covered frontier.

In the height of the dog days of summer, the foothills of the Tanggula Mountains at an altitude of over 5,000 meters remain bitterly cold. Representative officers and soldiers of the Mobile Fifth Detachment of a certain brigade under the People's Armed Police (PAP) Beijing Corps ascended to the northern Tibetan plateau to jointly carry out the "Hand in Hand on the Road to Strengthening the Military (强军路上手拉手)" paired co-construction activity with the Tanggula Sub-unit of the Nagqu Brigade of the PAP Tibet Corps.

The two units are separated by thousands of li, yet their original aspiration to strengthen the military has always been one and the same. The Mobile Fifth Detachment is stationed in the core area of the capital, and year-round undertakes arduous, dangerous, and urgent tasks including security for major events, emergency response, and disaster relief—it is the "sharp-blade iron fist (尖刀铁拳)" safeguarding the capital's security and stability. The Tanggula Sub-unit is rooted in a zone hostile to life, where officers and soldiers live year-round alongside extreme cold, oxygen deprivation, fierce winds, and permafrost. In the harsh environment where "you wear a padded coat in all four seasons and the wind sends stones flying," they guard frontier security and have built an indestructible steel barrier on the snow-covered plateau.

At the beginning of this year, when the Party committee of a certain brigade under the PAP Beijing Corps was deliberating on and deploying work to strengthen grassroots-level building, it decided to encourage each detachment to independently link up with PAP honorary sub-units and red sub-units, using the "Hand in Hand on the Road to Strengthening the Military" activity as a vehicle to broaden channels for unit building and personnel cultivation, and to stimulate the intrinsic motivation of officers and soldiers to learn from each other and advance together. The Mobile Fifth Detachment selected the Tanggula Sub-unit, with which it had previously established a co-construction relationship, to jointly carry out the "Hand in Hand on the Road to Strengthening the Military" paired co-construction activity.

Before long, the detachment selected one officer to lead the team and chose seven Party member backbone personnel to form a small detachment, which then set off for the Tanggula Sub-unit. The officers and soldiers entered the world's highest-altitude railway duty post, studied and experienced the "Old Tibet Spirit (老西藏精神)" of "exceptional capacity to endure hardship, exceptional capacity to fight, exceptional capacity to bear suffering, exceptional capacity for unity, and exceptional capacity for dedication," and felt up close the loyal steadfastness of the "Heavenly Road Sentinels (天路卫士)."

Tanggula Sub-unit Corporal Niu Shuo shared his personal experience of duty on the plateau. In the winter of 2020, the Tanggula Mountain area was struck by a severe blizzard, temperatures plummeted to minus 30 degrees Celsius, some road sections were completely buried under snow, and officers and soldiers on duty faced unprecedented difficulties and challenges.

During night sentry duty, the biting cold wind cut across his face like a knife, and Niu Shuo's hands and feet quickly became frozen stiff and numb—yet he held his post without the slightest relaxation. "Guarding the plateau and standing every watch well is our original aspiration and mission," Niu Shuo said candidly. When he first arrived on the plateau, faced with the harsh environment and monotonous life, he too had felt lost and helpless, but the stories of veteran soldiers who had taken root on the wind-and-snow plateau and silently held their battle positions gradually helped him understand the mission and responsibility of a revolutionary soldier.

"Standing guard at the heart of the motherland means holding the bottom line and protecting security—there is no room for the slightest slackening." At the activity site, Mobile Fifth Detachment squad leader Luo Lizhao drew on years of experience performing duty during major missions to recount his insights from handling major emergencies on multiple occasions, sharing emergency response techniques, squad coordination methods, and his experience in leading troops by grasping conduct, enforcing strict discipline, and forging elite soldiers day to day. Below the podium, officers and soldiers of the Tanggula Sub-unit listened with exceptional attentiveness, taking notes on key points in their notebooks one after another.

During the activity, squad leader backbone personnel and professional top performers from both units conducted in-depth discussions and exchanges centered on the grassroots-level goal of forging "three areas of excellence (三个过硬)." The Mobile Fifth Detachment's backbone personnel, drawing on their actual work, gave a detailed introduction to the detachment's experience and practices in refined management of combat readiness materiel and routine investigation of safety hazards. The Tanggula Sub-unit's backbone personnel, drawing on the special characteristics of the plateau environment, introduced the "weather-adaptive training organization method (天气适配组训法)" they had worked out through exploration, as well as their beneficial attempts to routinely conduct post skills competitions and hold story-sharing sessions to boost morale and consolidate the unit's collective strength.

After the on-site exchanges concluded, officers and soldiers from both units stepped over loose stones and into the cold wind, setting out together on the plateau patrol route at an altitude of over 5,000 meters. The howling wind made it difficult to stand upright; the Mobile Fifth Detachment officers and soldiers, newly arrived on the plateau and not yet acclimatized, supported one another as they moved forward. Everyone entered the sentry post duty positions, materiel storage warehouses, and insulated duty sentry booths, gaining a thorough understanding of duty modes, life support, and emergency response under conditions of extreme cold and oxygen deprivation, and arriving at a genuine and direct understanding of the profound meaning of the word "perseverance (坚守)."

The officers and soldiers then entered the Tanggula Sub-unit's honor room. Inside the glass display cases, severely worn cold-weather gloves, old and faded duty armbands, binoculars covered in scratches, and neatly arranged honor plaques silently told of the glorious years in which the post's officers and soldiers held their battle positions.

Zhou Jiang, a guide who has been rooted on the plateau for many years, pointed to a black-and-white photograph on the wall showing a veteran soldier on foot patrol carrying simple equipment, and recalled the past with deep feeling: "When the sub-unit was first established, officers and soldiers faced tremendous difficulties in performing duty patrols—crawling over ice and lying in snow was the norm, and in extreme weather conditions even a single step was nearly impossible to take…"

One vivid figure after another, one burning memory after another, deeply moved all the officers and soldiers present. During the activity, the two units also used cloud-based video link-up to enable officers and soldiers of the Mobile Fifth Detachment and the Tanggula Sub-unit, separated by thousands of li, to interact across the distance. As the activity drew to a close, officers and soldiers at both locations fell into neat formation and loudly called out the co-construction slogan: "Cross the mountains to keep our appointment at Tanggula, united hearts together guarding the line of home and nation (跨山赴约唐古拉，同心共守家国线)."

Different battle positions, the same sense of responsibility; different missions, the same pursuit.

Leadership of the Mobile Fifth Detachment introduced that they will take this activity as a starting point to build a normalized, in-depth, and all-around platform for co-construction, co-cultivation, and co-sharing, and to forge a new path of paired co-construction for grassroots-level units—one of jointly cultivating ideology, jointly researching training, jointly studying management, and jointly resolving difficulties.