Barracks Observation | The "Dragon Palace Story Circle" Is Now in Session
Last time we talked about "embarrassing moments"; this time we talk about "shining moments"
■ PLA Daily Special Correspondents Mao Lin and Zhan Changhe
Deep sea. The lights in a submarine compartment glow warm and bright. During a break in training, the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" convenes on schedule. Officers and soldiers sit gathered in a circle, the sound of applause filling the space.
Post-2000 electrician soldier Li Qiang rises to his feet, fists clenched, chest straight, his voice trembling with excitement: "This is my second time sharing a story. The first time I shared, I was still a 'rookie electrician,' and what I shared was the awkwardness of my first time at sea. This time, I'm sharing my real experience of going from dead last in my specialty to staging a comeback and winning an award at a skills competition."
"In school, passing an exam was meeting the standard; on a submarine, excellence is merely the minimum standard." The moment Li Qiang opened his mouth, the compartment fell silent.
As a submarine electrician, Li Qiang is responsible for routine circuit inspections and basic fault troubleshooting. He was reasonably proficient at the basic maintenance work, but the phrase his squad leader and technician often said—"one hundred minus one equals zero"—he only half understood at first. After repeated underwater dives, he began to grasp that electrical circuits are like the neural pathways of a great deep-sea whale: a single hidden hazard, a single mistake, could produce irreversible consequences. There is no room for the slightest carelessness in every wire an electrician handles, every inspection he conducts.
High-intensity specialty skills competitions are an important platform for testing practical proficiency. Last year, higher authorities organized an electricians' specialty competition. Rapid fault isolation, precision wiring, and equipment commissioning—all were hard-core events, and the participants were all technical backbones and seasoned experts from each submarine detachment, making the competition extremely fierce. To test the depth of his own abilities, Li Qiang voluntarily signed up.
The first practice session hit him like a bucket of cold water. Faced with a complex simulated circuit fault, Li Qiang's eyes went blank and his hands were clumsy; he could not locate the fault point for a long time. His precision wiring was frantic—slow, full of errors—and his ranking was dead last. Li Qiang was consumed by a sense of defeat.
Squad leader Cao Zhifei saw his despondency and, after a meal one day, took the initiative to pull him aside: "Electricians' competitions are about precision and speed, but even more about patience and tenacity. You've just had less exposure and aren't yet proficient—don't be so quick to write yourself off. Train with me step by step, and you'll definitely catch up."
From that day on, Li Qiang locked himself onto his training station and entered a mode of "hardening and tempering through fire." He wore out electrical schematics and fault manuals, copying out circuit nodes and equipment parameters sentence by sentence. During practical training, he drilled repeatedly against the simulated fault bench—from simple fault isolation to complex circuit connections, over and over again. When he encountered problems he didn't understand, he pestered his squad leader with questions, working through wiring techniques, tool use, and fault logic analysis item by item until he had fully mastered each one. Day after day, his operations grew faster and steadier, and his scores climbed to the upper-middle tier.
On the day of the formal competition, top performers from each submarine competed on the same stage. Li Qiang methodically and swiftly traced the circuits, precisely located the fault, and deftly completed the wiring and commissioning—zero errors, zero mistakes throughout. When the results were announced, Li Qiang had won third place.
"That night I was so excited I couldn't sleep. Replaying every moment of training in my mind—I'll never forget it." Li Qiang grew more and more animated as he spoke, his voice quavering: "As long as you're willing to work hard and refuse to give up, you will absolutely break through yourself and achieve growth. This experience taught me what it means to bear the responsibility of a submarine soldier, and it strengthened my resolve to take root in the deep blue and guard our nation's great weapons."
When he finished, waves of applause broke out in the compartment. Under the lights, the officers and soldiers' eyes shone with intensity. The submarine's political commissar stood up to offer a summary: "Holding the 'Dragon Palace Story Circle' is about sharing yourself and illuminating the compartment. The stage may be small, but it connects to the deep-sea battlefield; the stories are plain, but they stir the heroic spirit within." Squad leader Cao Zhifei smiled and added: "Li Qiang's story was electrifying (特来电)!"
From "embarrassing moments" to "shining moments"—between two appearances on stage, only a year had passed. The same compartment, the same soldier, two completely different stories. Below the stage, some new soldiers had their heads down, writing furiously in their notebooks; some veterans were nodding with a thoughtful look. Whoever has an unforgettable journey of the heart, whoever has made a leap in growth—the next person to step onto the stage could be any one of them.
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The "Dragon Palace Story Circle" Is Now in Session
■ PLA Daily Special Correspondents Mao Lin and Dong Cunjin
A submarine cuts through the waves. Photo by PLA Daily Special Correspondent Mao Lin.
One chance act of counseling brings one profound transformation
Beneath the ocean, the waves make no sound. The lights in the submarine compartment are soft. New soldier Li Jinrong, who has just finished his watch, is surrounded by his comrades, opening his mouth for the first time to voluntarily share his story from a long-distance voyage.
Who could have imagined that this now-composed young man had suffered a severe psychological stress reaction during his first long voyage, and had once been on the verge of collapse?
Recalling his first time at sea: a typhoon drove massive waves, and the submarine pitched and rolled underwater like being inside a tumble dryer. Li Jinrong vomited continuously, his whole body drained of strength, curled up in a corner. Inside the sealed submarine, this condition could trigger risks at any moment.
The submarine crew's political commissar arrived immediately. Without resorting to stiff lecturing, he drew Li Jinrong close, listened to him vent his suffering, and then slowly began to recount his own experiences—enlisting as a new soldier, growing into his battle station. His first time at sea and the seasickness and vomiting, the old squad leader's hands-on mentorship, his family's entreaties and hopes, the mission and responsibility of a submarine soldier—one true story after another, one heartfelt word after another, like a warm, gentle current that smoothed away Li Jinrong's distress.
"Growth takes time, but if a submarine soldier cannot overcome wind and waves, how can he overcome the enemy?" These words were engraved in Li Jinrong's heart. After that voyage, he went from fearing and avoiding sea duty to volunteering proactively. He subsequently carried out three long-distance voyage missions, was rated a "Red Flag Battle Station," and grew into a confident, strong submarine soldier.
One chance act of counseling brought one profound transformation. The submarine Party branch reviewed and summarized: submarine soldiers serve for extended periods in sealed underwater environments, and in the middle and later stages of long voyages they are highly prone to irritability, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Traditional lecturing methods are difficult to make effective.
"Stiff lectures don't stick; stories from those around you go straight to the heart." Young officers and soldiers dislike hollow lecturing but are willing to listen to real experiences; they are not satisfied with passive reception and crave active expression and exchange. Drawing on this analysis, the Party committee members gradually reached a consensus: truths that cannot be taught through instruction are revealed through events; confusions that cannot be explained through talking are guided through stories. The personal growth experiences, training insights, and battle-station stories of officers and soldiers are the most vivid and the most grounded in reality.
Following the momentum, the flotilla promoted compartment micro-sharing and battle-station small-exchange activities across all submarine detachments. During training breaks, watch rotations, and transit passages—with no restrictions on topic, rank, or duration—officers and soldiers sat gathered together and opened their hearts. In a few words here and there, the harrowing moments in training, the unforgettable experiences at their posts, the warm stories with family, and the insights gained from setbacks in growing up all became vivid material.
No fixed stage. No distinction by rank. No rules and regulations. The "Dragon Palace Story Circle" quietly began beneath the ocean.
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Issuing a "wish list" to solicit the stories officers and soldiers want to hear
The "Dragon Palace Story Circle" was warmly received underwater, and the flotilla Party committee began to consider: how could this vibrant experience move from random sharing toward ideological guidance (思想引领)? How could its reach be broadened and its penetrating power strengthened?
During one training embed aboard a submarine, propaganda section officer Liu Haowen observed that while the story circle was grounded and warm, its content was scattered and its format casual. Senior non-commissioned officers and technical backbones carried a wealth of moving stories and valuable experience, yet lacked a platform for concentrated presentation; young officers and soldiers also had real-world confusions about professional advancement, balancing family, and the pursuit of honor that required more targeted guidance.
After returning ashore, Liu Haowen conducted multiple visits and investigations and put forward the idea of bringing the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" ashore—taking the good underwater practices topside, upgrading the casual small exchanges into a polished major platform, so that more officers and soldiers could benefit.
The flotilla immediately set a clear direction: focus on what officers and soldiers are thinking, what confuses them, and what they hope for, and drive the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" to transform from "casual underwater chat" to "polished ashore presentation."
They issued a "wish list" to solicit the stories people wanted to hear, the confusions they wanted resolved, and the experiences they wanted to learn from; they selected officers and soldiers with "real achievements, real stories, real reputations, and real dedication" to serve as presenters. The first cohort to take the stage included both experienced submarine captains and political commissars and technically superb "soldier kings" (兵王); both steady and capable mid-grade non-commissioned officers and energetic young new soldiers.
The response from officers and soldiers was enthusiastic, but shortcomings were also exposed. Some presentations read like work summaries, lacking emotional warmth; some had the tone of classroom instruction, lacking the language of soldiers speaking to soldiers; some were logically loose and tediously long-winded. Once ashore, with a larger stage, the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" went through a period of "culture shock" (水土不服).
"Tell stories truthfully, precisely, and thoroughly; discard the lecturing tone and strengthen the sense of immersion—only then can you truly move officers and soldiers." A flotilla leader cut to the heart of the problem with one remark. Faced with invitations to take the stage, many officers and soldiers felt both excited and apprehensive: "Operating equipment at my battle station feels natural, but getting up to tell a story on stage—I have no confidence." Officers worked alongside them in heart-to-heart talks, encouragement, and one-on-one coaching and polishing, helping everyone shed their mental burdens and find the right narrative perspective. Mechanisms such as public speaking skills training, on-site interactive commentary, and audience feedback scoring were introduced one after another.
Diesel engine soldier Zhang Xintong shared his story of "getting chewed out," which deeply moved everyone present. During one equipment maintenance session, he disassembled components following the procedure and casually set the parts on the floor, preparing to clean them. Technician Li Yapei stopped him on the spot: "Precision components placed carelessly are easily knocked and easily contaminated by foreign matter. Improper storage is leaving a hidden hazard in the equipment."
Technician Li immediately demonstrated the standard procedure on the spot—the disassembly sequence of the parts, their placement positions, and the orientation and angle of each piece, all done with meticulous care. This "chewing out" left an indelible mark on Zhang Xintong. From that point on, he resolved to rid himself of his careless and impetuous habits and to engrave rigor, precision, and careful operation into his battle station.
Many officers' and soldiers' stories contain no grand narrative, yet they strike straight to the heart. Sergeant Zhan Changhe wrote in his reflections: "The gap is not in ability but in attitude. Growth means honestly confronting your shortcomings, correcting your faults, and doing every small thing to the utmost."
"Attend one story circle, understand a few truths; learn about one thing that happened nearby, and it lights the way forward." After polishing and upgrading, the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" became an ideological education brand that officers and soldiers genuinely enjoy and sincerely endorse. Presenters use the most plain language and the most authentic experiences to speak of loyalty, responsibility, discipline, and dedication—transforming abstract principles into concrete stories, and moving ideological and political work from "the page" to "the heart," from "the stage" to "the battle station."
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You speak, I speak, everyone speaks—everyone is a presenter
As the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" spread beyond its original circle, the flotilla Party committee set its sights on a higher objective: keeping the story circle's sights firmly trained on the "bullseye of winning battles" (打赢靶心).
The flotilla seized the momentum to upgrade it, focusing on forging swords in the deep sea and orienting toward war (向战而行), and mining advanced models who have taken root in the deep sea, trained hard to master their skills, and achieved outstanding results. The presenter corps gradually expanded to cover all submarine detachments, all specialties, and all posts, forming a vivid situation of "everyone tells stories, everywhere is a classroom, and education is received at all times."
The most recent session opened at the flotilla's "Deep Blue Bookbar." The first to take the stage was Master Chief Petty Officer Zhao Feng—dozens of long-distance voyages aboard submarines, participation in compiling six professional training manuals, recipient of the "All-Army Outstanding Non-Commissioned Officer Talent Award, First Class," and holder of one individual second-class merit citation and one third-class merit citation. Officers and soldiers below the stage exclaimed: "Truly impressive."
Zhao Feng did not recite his honors. Instead, he recounted the genuine passion he felt twenty years ago when he first received a new piece of equipment. At the time, the summer heat in the south was intense; the heat rash on his body broke open and turned into eczema—painful and itchy—yet out of his enthusiasm for the cause of strengthening the military and his love for the new equipment, Zhao Feng threw himself entirely into studying and mastering it.
He rolled up his sleeve, revealing old scars on his arm: "These are a submarine soldier's medals—witnesses to loyalty, witnesses to growth. Honor is the result of hard work, not the goal one pursues. Guard your battle station well, train your skills to be strong, and honor will come naturally." Plain words that resonated powerfully throughout the room.
Compartment technician Wu Donghua is normally quiet and reserved, but at the story circle he voluntarily took the stage to share his "battle to turn things around." In one skills competition, overconfident and careless, with an insufficiently solid foundation, he was eliminated in the first round and fell into despondency. Encouraged by his comrades, he settled his mind, addressed his weak points, and strengthened his deficiencies—drilling in training by day and grinding through theory by night. The following year, he won the championship in one stroke.
More and more people are becoming presenters. There is the "long-voyage vanguard" who has accumulated more than 2,000 days of sea training and whose farthest voyage track has spanned five time zones; there is the technical master who compiled a 300,000-character fault-clearing manual and is known as the "submarine's living circuit." One real, tangible story after another, one journey of determined commitment to strengthening the military after another—planting seeds of loyalty in the hearts of officers and soldiers and igniting the passion to win battles.
Using stories as a mirror to understand gains and losses, know direction, and strengthen the sense of responsibility (强担当). Nurtured and guided by the "Dragon Palace Story Circle," young officers and soldiers proactively seek out masters to learn from and work hard to master their specialties; backbone personnel take the lead in tackling difficult problems and charging to the front. Officers and soldiers are converting emotional identification into the driving force for military strengthening.
In the most recent live-combat training exercise, a submarine detachment's captain sounded the combat alarm, and all crew members rushed to their battle stations at the order—plotting the combat course, loading torpedoes into the tubes, entering target parameters. A series of actions proceeded with tense order and efficient coordination; the entire process took significantly less time than before, and the adversarial training mission was accomplished successfully.
The captain reflected: "A strong ideology means a strong force; high morale means winning battles. The Dragon Palace Story Circle may seem to be about telling stories, but in reality it consolidates the military's fighting spirit (聚军心), tempers the will to fight (砺斗志), and has formed a positive, upward-striving 'spiritual magnetic field' (精神磁场)."
Deep-sea diving, accompanied by stories. The "Dragon Palace Story Circle" has forged a path of ideological education that conforms to the characteristics of submarines, is close to the actual conditions of officers and soldiers, and is tightly linked to combat readiness and fighting. Only by being close to officers and soldiers, close to reality, and close to the battlefield can ideological and political work truly have vitality, appeal, and combat effectiveness.
Officers and soldiers of a submarine flotilla under the Northern Theater Command Navy organize a story-sharing activity during a break between missions. Photo by Gong Ruofan.
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In the Words of a Participant
Listening to the stories—and learning to "listen to the submarine"
■ Second-Class Petty Officer Zhang Lining
I've been in the submarine force for quite some time, but I've only been standing independent watch at my battle station for half a year. My battle station is in the stern compartment, and many people say this post is relatively simple and easy to get the hang of. But once you've actually gone to sea aboard a submarine, you understand—going to sea is going to war; diving is fighting; every minute and every second underwater is charged with a tension that permits no relaxation.
What you learn on paper always falls short. Squad leader Wang Shitian always said I had too much of a "bookish air" and didn't feel comfortable letting me stand watch independently. I said nothing, but inwardly I was unconvinced—I could recite the operating procedures backwards, I had the equipment parameters memorized cold. What exactly was I still lacking?
Then, at one session of the "Dragon Palace Story Circle," Squad Leader Wang recounted something from the past: during a midnight transit, he suddenly jolted awake from sleep, judged by listening to the sounds that the rudder had malfunctioned, rolled out of his bunk and rushed to the bridge to inspect and adjust it, and kept at it until dawn.
When the story was finished, the comrades in the compartment chimed in one after another: "That time the diesel engine made an abnormal noise, I also bolted upright." "The air conditioning fan had a problem—I was the first one to hear it." Everyone competed to share their experiences of "listening to diagnose faults." In that instant, something suddenly clicked for me: I was familiar with all the parameters of the equipment, but I was not familiar with its "temperament"—what sound does it make when operating normally? What subtle differences appear when the temperature changes? Does the timbre change when the load increases or decreases?
So it turned out that when it comes to equipment, you cannot merely be familiar with its performance—you must also "listen to the equipment."
Not long after, during a long voyage, I went through an entire day of training with flawless operations and precise commands, feeling quite good about myself. Late at night, Squad Leader Wang came to inspect the watch. The moment one foot crossed the threshold of the compartment, he immediately frowned: "The rudder sound isn't right." I concentrated and listened carefully—sure enough, there was a faint abnormality mixed in. That sound had been there all along, and I had been completely unaware of it. In that moment, my face burned, and my heart was full of remorse.
That night, Squad Leader Wang crouched beside the battle station and broke down the equipment sounds and fault characteristics for me one by one. A submarine is like a silent steel behemoth; every abnormal sound is a "distress signal." From that day on, I added one more "required course" to my routine—listening. Whether in harbor training or deep-sea navigation, whether in training exercises or during rest and relaxation, I pay careful attention to capture the subtle differences within the roar of machinery and the low hum of hydraulics. Cross-referencing professional manuals and combining them with the equipment's condition, I gradually worked out the patterns and slowly felt my way to the submarine's "pulse."
Another deep night. Underwater, the sea was calm. The mechanical sounds inside the compartment rose and fell steadily. After the watch change I fell into an exhausted sleep, when a strange sound suddenly bored into my ears—faint, yet unusually jarring. I was instantly alert, threw on my clothes, and rushed straight to the stern compartment, bending down close to the equipment to listen. A rubber-friction-like abnormal sound, accompanied by a slight trembling of the rudder mechanism. Air in the hydraulic cylinder? Piston cup too tight? Transformer fault? I rapidly ran through the possible faults in my mind, then immediately reported the phenomenon, the time period, and my preliminary assessment upward.
Afterward, the technician and the manufacturer jointly inspected and tested: the cause of the fault was a perfect match for my assessment. This successful "diagnosis" gave me a great surge of confidence.
Specialties have their divisions, but capability has no boundaries—I heard this at the story circle, and I verified it at my own battle station.
(Compiled by Mao Lin)
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Editor's Note
Learning to listen is even more important
Behind the success of the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" lies a simple question—why are officers and soldiers willing to listen and willing to speak? The answer may lie not in how to tell a good story, but in the "listening" that exists beyond the stories.
Submarine soldiers carry out missions for extended periods in sealed underwater environments, and in the middle and later stages of long voyages they are prone to irritability, anxiety, and depression. This is not an isolated phenomenon but a common psychological response to a special environment. Traditional educational methods are often powerless in the face of such problems—the principles being taught are all correct, but they cannot address the emotional need of officers and soldiers to feel understood. And the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" began, at its very origin, with one act of listening. A new soldier broke down emotionally during a long voyage; the submarine's political commissar did not rush to lecture him, but first listened to him speak, and then shared his own experiences. After that night, an educational approach quietly took shape—first let a person finish saying what they have to say, then say what you want to say.
The "Dragon Palace Story Circle" went from "casual chat" to "polished presentation"; its form changed, but its core did not—it has always been officers and soldiers doing the talking, and officers and soldiers doing the listening. When an outpouring finds a response, when confusion is taken seriously, only then will officers and soldiers truly open their hearts.
Educators are always eager to "speak," yet often forget to "listen." Space on a submarine is cramped and personnel are fixed; the physical distance between officers and soldiers is very close, but the psychological distance is not necessarily so. What closes it? Not more sophisticated reasoning techniques, but the posture of "I am willing to listen to what you have to say." When those who lead soldiers press their ears close to the soldiers' chests and listen to their anxiety, grievances, and confusion, trust can begin to be built.
Behind every good story, there must be a good listener. The reason the "Dragon Palace Story Circle" was able to grow from a micro-experiment in one submarine detachment into a brand activity for the entire flotilla is not only that the stories grew more and more compelling, but that the ears in the audience grew more and more sincere. When educators step back one pace, officers and soldiers step forward one pace—and the effect of education advances one pace further still.