The Radar Station Has a "Mountain Path"
■ PLA Daily Reporter Liu Min Illustrated by Zeng Yuming
Winding up along a rugged mountain road, after more than an hour the vehicle came to a slow stop in front of the garrison of a Central Theater Command Air Force radar station situated on a mountainside. In early summer, wildflowers were just beginning to bloom at an elevation of more than 1,700 meters — the seasons here run nearly a month behind those at the foot of the mountain.
The radar station garrison is small but built in an orderly and well-organized manner. The radar shelter is deployed right within the compound, and all manner of facilities are fully in place. After a quick look around, the reporter thought to himself: the officers and soldiers standing watch in an environment like this have it fairly convenient.
At that moment, Station Commander Li Siqi pointed toward the rear of the mountain: "Come on, let's go 'up the mountain' and have a look." The reporter was momentarily puzzled — weren't they already on the mountain?
Rounding the barracks, a stairway built along the mountainside came into view. The steps were neatly constructed, the cement joints still fresh — clearly someone had maintained them recently. Li Siqi told the reporter that this was the path leading to the radar position at the summit, and the station's officers and soldiers called it the "mountain path." In the past, the radar shelter was set up at the summit, and officers and soldiers relied entirely on this stairway to go up and down for duty, training, and emergency repairs. At the beginning of this year, the station was designated a pilot unit and moved its duty positions from the summit down to the command room on the mountainside. Combat readiness response became more rapid, and the need to go up the mountain dropped sharply. On a daily basis, only a small number of personnel need to go up to maintain the radar antenna and carry out routine inspections.
The reporter could not help but ask curiously: "Now that the duty positions have been moved down, and people don't go up very often anymore, is it really necessary to go to the trouble of maintaining this stretch of steps?"
Li Siqi did not answer the question directly. Instead, he brought up First Sergeant (Grade One) Jiang Lifeng, who has since retired. Sergeant Jiang spent nearly 30 years at the station, witnessed this path built from nothing, and walked up these steps to the summit every single day. Sometimes he went up alone to inspect the equipment; sometimes he brought a few new soldiers along, talking as they walked, recounting stories from years past.
The reporter's group encountered First Sergeant (Grade One) Jia Xinzhao — Jiang Lifeng's apprentice — on the mountain, in the middle of maintaining the steps. He worked with practiced ease while new soldiers assisted at his side. During a rest break, Jia Xinzhao pointed at the ground beneath his feet and recounted the origins of this path:
When the radar station was first built, there was simply no path here. The equipment was at the summit, and getting up and down meant forcing your way through rocks and weeds on two legs. When it rained, the dirt slope turned to mud, and taking a fall was commonplace. One night during an emergency mobilization drill, a soldier ran up in the dark, sprained his ankle, and still pushed through to reach his position. After that day, Sergeant Jiang and his comrades made up their minds: a path that everyone had to walk every day absolutely had to be built. With no machinery, they relied on hammer and chisel alone. From the mountainside to the summit, 399 steps — that is how the path was carved out.
"Because of mission requirements, we had to walk this path back and forth several times a day. The moment the combat readiness alarm sounded, we had to charge straight up the mountain — arriving at our positions gasping for breath, with no time to recover before going on duty." Jia Xinzhao said that having gone through experiences like that, the station later developed a tradition: with each new intake of soldiers, the veterans first take them on a walk up this path.
"When we were initially deliberating over whether it was necessary to build this stretch of steps, the station Party branch held a special meeting," Li Siqi said. Consensus was reached quickly: build it — and not only build it, but build it well. This path is not merely a passageway to the summit; it also represents the mission and sense of duty of radar soldiers. As long as there are still duty positions or equipment up there, this path must be kept in good repair.
Climbing up along the steps, the wind at the summit suddenly grew fierce, buffeting those who stood there. Radar Technician, Second-Class Senior Sergeant Xue Ren said this wind was already considered mild. One winter during an emergency repair, temperatures dropped to below minus 30 degrees Celsius, and icy wind carrying sand particles lashed at them so hard they could barely open their eyes. He and the station commander ran up from below, their hands stiffened with cold; the two of them would warm their hands together and then keep working. After more than three hours of continuous effort, they finally resolved a sudden malfunction in a new-type radar. When the task was complete, they gathered the young backbone personnel and compiled the lessons learned from that emergency repair under low-temperature conditions into a set of procedures, which became an important reference for the station's equipment support work.
As dusk fell, the mountains grew still and quiet, and lights came on in several rooms of the garrison. In the operations research room, the station commander led the "study-and-research team" in war-gaming exercise plans and working through the handling of special situations and anti-jamming operations. In the study room, Plotter Meng Xiangsen was putting in extra practice on intelligence transmission, his fingers blistered but unwilling to stop. He said his scores had just reached the passing mark, and there was still a gap between him and excellence.
Today, though the duty positions have been moved down from the mountain, the officers and soldiers have set out on another "mountain path" — the equipment has been upgraded, conditions have improved, but there is no end to enhancing professional capability. They carry forward the same drive that once went into building those steps, and apply it to studying and planning for war: every training subject is a new step on the stairway, and every technical challenge is a stone that must be chiseled and shaped. The officers and soldiers say this path must be walked — and walked well.
Standing at the summit, gazing at the radar antenna rising above the surrounding peaks, the reporter suddenly recalled a detail noticed on the way up — the sea-buckthorn trees lining both sides of the steps were in bloom, clusters of small yellow-green flowers opening all along the way. The officers and soldiers said that sea-buckthorn fears neither barren soil, nor wind and sand, nor bitter cold, and from this they have drawn a lesson: the more barren the soil, the deeper the roots; the fiercer the wind and rain, the stronger the will; the more bitter the cold, the sweeter the reward. Is this not another expression of the spirit of the "mountain path"? It was so when they were chiseling stone and laying the path back then; it is equally so now when they work through the night in the command room tackling hard problems: grit your teeth when conditions are harsh, and don't let up when conditions improve.
Walking back down from the summit, the reporter turned for one last look at that stretch of path. The 399 steps lay quietly embedded in the mountainside — one end connected to the hardships of the past, the other leading to today's duty positions. Every officer and soldier at the radar station knows clearly that before them lies another path toward higher standards, faster response, and stronger capability on the road to a stronger military — and every step of that journey must be taken with solid footing.
Editor's Note
The Symphony of "Two Paths"
■ Liu Weiqi
In the television drama "Soldiers Sortie" (士兵突击), there is a classic scene: Xu Sanduo, alone, quietly builds a road across a desolate and lonely grassland. It is precisely this road that helps the soldiers of "Grassland Fifth Squad" recover the bearing that befits a military man.
Following the reporter's footsteps on this visit, this editor felt the same kind of steadfast resolve at this radar station. The duty positions have been moved down the mountain — but should the steps leading up still be maintained? The officers and soldiers answered without hesitation: yes — not only maintain them, but maintain them well. Some things may seem "useless," yet they can elevate the spirit; some paths may seem "hard to walk," yet they are precisely what tempers character.
The changes at the radar station reflect a new challenge for grassroots-level (基层) development: equipment has been upgraded, data links optimized, and working and training conditions are incomparably better than before — so how does one maintain, as ever, the charging posture of struggle?
"We must treat the grassroots as fertile ground for carrying forward fine traditions, actively explore the laws and beneficial practices of grassroots-level development under new circumstances, attach importance to work that is fundamental, beneficial in the long run, and builds lasting momentum, and lay a more solid foundation for force development and combat effectiveness." These words point to the key to solving the problem — the officers' and soldiers' duty positions may be adjusted, but the "duty position" of the spirit must not be lost; technical means may be iterated, but the underlying quality of hard struggle must not fade.
The real-world "mountain path" carries memory and inheritance; the "mountain path" of capability leads toward victory and winning in war — and the symphony of these "two paths" thereby becomes all the more concrete. On the journey to a stronger military, we must continuously enrich the spiritual connotations of the revolutionary soldier of the new era, and let the tenacity of "hammer and chisel" (一锤一凿) blaze with new vitality at new duty positions. The goal of the centenary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army is pressing and imminent. From every step on the stairway to every duty position, what is needed are those who press forward in continuous struggle.