Military Camp Observations | The "Red Torch" Is Spreading Like Wildfire

The "Red Torch" Is Spreading Like Wildfire

■ Guo Zijin, PLA Daily Reporter Shi Yu, Correspondent Xiao Liming

Members of the Army Engineering University "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team deliver a presentation. Photo by Jiang Xinyu

Audience comment cards collected by the Army Engineering University "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team. Provided by the authors

This is a "youth formation" (青春方阵) of fewer than a hundred people, yet it surges with a force that moves hearts. Members of the Army Engineering University "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team travel year-round between campus and grassroots units, between classrooms and training grounds. They are both "faithful listeners" to stories of army-building and "resolute torchbearers" of the red gene (红色基因), building bridges for the transmission of spirit in the posture of youth.

"Young students narrate strong-army stories in the voice of youth—full of vitality and deeply infectious," said Dai Jianfeng, a cadre of a certain cadet battalion. He noted that the team's footprint has spread across 20 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities including Beijing, Tibet, and Xinjiang; cumulative travel has exceeded 100,000 kilometers; more than 160 lecture sessions have been conducted; and online and offline audiences have surpassed 80,000. From a single offline session that packed 7,800 seats, to an online broadcast that drew the attention of ten thousand viewers across 162 Hope Primary Schools along the Long March route, the "Red Torch" has already taken on the force of a prairie fire.

The Torch First Ignites

As long as the telling is truthful, close to life, and emotionally resonant, strong-army stories have the power to pierce the heart

Not long ago, the atmosphere inside the honor room of the "Liu Laozhuang Company" of a certain brigade of the 82nd Group Army was blazing.

On the stage, Li Bingshu, a member of the Army Engineering University "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team, delivered a vivid and emotionally charged account of the loyalty and steadfast commitment of frontier soldiers in the new era. Below the stage, iron-willed officers and soldiers held their breath, eyes brimming with tears.

Four members' two consecutive days of presentations earned wave after wave of applause.

This was not a moment of glory achieved overnight. Its origins can be traced back to a "debut" that made team leader Zhang Weishi and political instructor Ding Pengfei break into a cold sweat several years ago.

In the bitter winter of 2021, the lecture team stepped outside the school gates for the first time, arriving at Houbiaoning Primary School in Nanjing. Facing civilian teachers and students, could these military academy cadets convey the positive energy of strong-army stories?

On the stage, team member Zhang Yixin's palms were drenched in sweat. Just before she went on, Ding Pengfei gently patted her shoulder: "Don't be nervous—just speak the sincerity in your heart." Those words became the key that unlocked her.

Though her delivery was somewhat unpolished and her sentences occasionally faltered, when Zhang Yixin spoke of soldiers persisting on patrol in temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius, and of peacekeeping officers and soldiers guarding peace in foreign lands, the auditorium fell completely silent, and many children quietly wiped away tears.

Practice proved: as long as the telling is truthful, close to life, and emotionally resonant, strong-army stories have the power to pierce the heart.

From that point on, the lecture team organized into small squads of three to five, using spare time to travel to military camps, schools, and communities. They abandoned rote recitation, studied content deeply, and carefully built five core modules: "loyalty, responsibility, dedication, struggle, and peace." They innovated a "menu-style" (点餐式) lecture format—grassroots units place orders according to their needs, and the team delivers tailored sessions.

Warm echoes continued to resonate. From the first lecture to the present, the children of Houbiaoning Primary School in Nanjing have established a lasting connection with frontier company officers and soldiers thousands of li away. The children write naive yet sincere greetings, which lecture team members personally deliver to the snow-covered frontier; the soldiers' reply letters are carried back to the school by team members. A single sheet of correspondence bridges children's hearts and the military camp, planting love of family and country (家国情怀) in the hearts of the next generation.

Inside the cadet battalion's lecture team exhibition hall, walls of honorary certificates gleam. Zhang Weishi pointed to the densely packed "message columns" in the display cases and said with satisfaction: "These are the heartfelt words written by officers, soldiers, and children after the lectures." On the cards are soldiers' reflections—"After hearing the story, I stand guard with more spirit"—and children's drawings captioned "When I grow up, I want to join the People's Liberation Army."

But more precious than the messages are the eyes lit up by faith—and that is precisely the driving force that sends lecture team members across mountains and seas.

Passing the Torch

To truly understand the spirit behind heroes' stories, and to carry forward genuine feeling, reverence, and faith together

Zhang Yixin, about to graduate, solemnly handed a thick stack of lecture manuscripts to a new member. The accumulation of more than 110 lecture sessions was, in that moment, transformed into a silent entrustment.

"Lecturing is absolutely not simply reading from a script. You must understand the spirit behind heroes' stories and carry forward genuine feeling, reverence, and faith together—move hearts with sincerity, and illuminate the original aspiration (初心)." Zhang Yixin said softly.

"The wind is 'iron horses in the autumn wind' (铁马秋风); the flowers are 'chrysanthemums on the battlefield' (战地黄花); the snow is 'warships in the night snow' (楼船夜雪); the moon is 'the cold moon over the frontier pass' (边关冷月)." When Zhang Yixin reinterpreted this soldier's romanticism, new cadet Li Zhuoxi in the audience felt a surge of emotion—a resonance from the depths of the soul.

Li Zhuoxi recalled the experience of paying respects at the Kangxiwar Martyrs' Cemetery in middle school. In the wind and snow of the Kunlun Mountains, facing tombstones bearing the names of fallen heroes whose average age was under 25, the word "sacrifice" was no longer an abstraction from a textbook but cold stone carvings and scalding blood.

In that moment, Li Zhuoxi, seated in the audience, clenched her fists and resolved to take up the weighty microphone and pass on the heartbeat within the strong-army stories.

The reporter holds a quarto-sized lecture booklet with a simple, substantial cover. Opening the pages, one is immediately met with the ice shards on patrol routes, the frost on guard posts, and the ice flowers that cannot be scraped clean from windshields. These words with "granularity" (颗粒度) make the image of the soldier tangible and palpable, give heroes flesh and blood, and make the distant frontier no longer abstract.

Yet the road from being a listener "illuminated by the light" to a speaker "carrying the light forward" is far more rugged than imagined.

Cadet Wang Wanchen once thought lecturing was nothing more than reading beautiful prose aloud. Not until new-recruit training, when she witnessed a lecturer on stage performing with split-second precision and words that reached the heart, did she understand: "one minute on stage, ten years of work off stage."

Later, after being selected into the lecture team, Wang Wanchen endured six months of tempering to make that "one minute" shine. She rewrote her lecture script eight or nine times and remade video materials five or six times. At first she mechanically recited; later she dug into details like an archaeologist, even traveling to the frontier during holidays to verify facts. Yellowed diaries, blurred group photographs, candles in tents that could not be kept straight—one by one these details were brought back to life, and her presentations were no longer hollow but filled with the warmth of history.

In the lecture team, this kind of near-relentless (折腾) refinement is the norm.

In late-night preparation rooms, the sound of keyboards often continues until the early hours. To verify a single detail about heating conditions at a high-altitude outpost, they collected more than a dozen reference journals; to enhance the impact of a training exercise video, they taught themselves editing software and adjusted it frame by frame. This meticulousness stems from reverence for truth, and even more from veneration of heroes.

From the biting cold winds of Kangxiwar to the clear sound of reading in the ancient capital Jinling; from the trembling of hands touching a tombstone to the steadiness of hands gripping a microphone—these young military academy cadets are conducting a spiritual relay race that transcends time and space. As Li Zhuoxi wrote in her lecture script: "Frontier soldiers cannot walk out of the mountains, but their stories must walk out of the mountains."

Forged into One's True Character

The young people who once interpreted steadfast commitment on stage have begun to write new stories of steadfast commitment

In the blazing summer of 2024, the parasol trees on campus rustled. Lecture team member Liu Shilin stood before the mirror in the "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team exhibition hall and straightened his uniform for the last time. In that moment, with solemn ceremony, he bid farewell to a chapter of his life.

Several months later, in a highland river valley at an elevation of more than 3,000 meters, Liu Shilin—now a platoon leader—bent over communications equipment as sweat dripped onto the frozen highland soil. The young man who had once interpreted steadfast commitment on stage had begun to write new stories of steadfast commitment.

This crossing was no accident. Three years of lecturing: the more deeply he spoke of others' steadfast commitment, the clearer the call within him became. When graduation assignments were made, Liu Shilin solemnly signed his name on a volunteer application to serve in Tibet.

"I don't feel it's hard. The real frontier is far harder than this," Liu Shilin said calmly over the phone. He advanced with his unit to a certain highland—a "forbidden zone of life" (生命禁区) that even eagles struggle to cross. Traveling through wind and snow, he felt a long-absent sense of groundedness: "Just like the stories I told—steadfast commitment is simply a habit."

In the northwestern corner of the motherland, in extreme cold of minus 50 degrees Celsius, Yang Aoqi, a 2025 graduating cadet, wrapped her coat tightly and raced along the frontier line with her unit.

"You will see a sentry turn around, and there is a face sculpted by ice and snow yet still radiant with a smile." Over the phone, Yang Aoqi's voice carried a smile, and also the chill of wind and snow. The images that once existed only in lecture scripts have now become everyday footnotes in her diary. The Kazakh grandmother who always comes to visit them carrying warm naan has gone from a figure in source material to a neighbor.

What lecturing gave them was not only burning passion but also the ability to "live life as poetry" (把日子过成诗). Liu Shilin, excelling across the board, often organizes cultural and recreational activities in his company, continuing his stage mission in new ways—warming the people in the stories. Yang Aoqi applies the sharp powers of observation honed while writing lecture scripts to documenting the real frontier, attempting to prove to the world: in the land of extreme cold, there is not only sacrifice and dedication, but also scalding faith and pure joy.

Liu Shilin gazed at the snow-capped mountains outside the window and gave a platoon leader's answer: "Once I spoke of steadfast commitment from the stage; now I guard the mountains and rivers from my battle position."

A Joint Lecture on Kaishan Island

■ Guo Zijin, PLA Daily Reporter Shi Yu

Deep in the Yellow Sea, waves crash against the shore.

Kaishan Island, with an area of only 0.013 square kilometers, stands isolated between sea and sky, long known as the "Yellow Sea Outpost."

Recently, the Army Engineering University "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team and representatives of the "Spark" (星火) theoretical lecture service group for political instructors boarded a boat from Yanwei Port in Lianyungang, broke through the waves, and landed on this spiritual high ground to carry out an immersive educational practice activity.

This journey was a mutual pilgrimage to spiritual origins: "Torch" (薪火) brought vivid stories, tracing the roots of loyalty; "Spark" (星火) carried the light of theory, taking deep root in the fertile soil of practice; and the island garrison's day-and-night vigil was a silent yet soul-shaking lesson in ideological and political education (思政课).

At dawn, the five-starred red flag rose slowly in the sea breeze as all members stood in solemn attention. "What rises is the national flag; what is held is the position." Zhang Yang, the officer leading the group, said that in that moment, the word "loyalty" in the lecture scripts suddenly carried the weight of a thousand jun.

Afterward, led by "Model of the Era" (时代楷模) Wang Shihua, everyone walked the small path that Wang Jicai had patrolled day after day for 32 years, entering the outpost and the flag-raising platform. Sea winds had polished the worn stone steps; inside the simple barracks, a kerosene lamp, an old wooden bed, and several well-thumbed diaries silently told of day after day of steadfast commitment.

"Only by walking the hero's path today do I truly understand the mountain-weight mission carried by the words 'guarding the island is guarding the nation.'" "Red Torch" lecture team member Jiang Xinyu stood beside Wang Shihua, her heart surging and her eyes moist.

A few days earlier, Jiang Xinyu had spoken to a certain unit about the life-and-death trials faced by pilots executing missions. Now, standing beside this 64-year-old woman whose heart is bound to the island, she suddenly understood: the light of heroes shines not only in the magnificent moment of takeoff, but also settles in the ordinary years of day after day, making the island one's home—the ordinary forges the great, and steadfast commitment is loyalty.

This profound realization was swiftly transformed into powerful resonance in the lecture. That afternoon, a distinctive joint lecture unfolded on a makeshift stage.

Emotion and reason intertwined; stories and theory resonated together, like two clear streams flowing into the heart.

"This kind of lecture goes straight to the soul—it has the warmth to move hearts and the depth to enlighten minds," said a cadre from the Jiangsu Coast Guard Bureau who came to observe and learn, deeply moved.

This "integrated emotion and reason" (情理交融) joint lecture model allowed educational practice to truly take root. "Torch" conveyed warmth through genuine feeling; "Spark" conferred elevation through theory. The torch ignites faith; the spark illuminates the course—the two converged on Kaishan Island, kindling an inextinguishable spiritual flame.

"One visit to the island benefits a lifetime; seeing the worthy and striving to emulate them is the only way to move steadily and far." Zhang Yang said that Kaishan Island is not only a spiritual monument but also the "fertile spiritual soil" that nourishes the lecture team. Here, team members personally experienced the patriotic and dedicated spirit of "guarding the island is guarding the home; only when the nation is secure can the home be secure." This steadfast commitment and loyalty that spans the years has tempered their ideals and convictions, and has infused the lecture work with vivid energy and a weighty foundation.

As night fell, the transport boat slowly left the island. Looking back across the sea and sky, the outline of the red-roofed white tower gradually blurred, but the five-starred red flag billowing in the wind had been deeply imprinted in the hearts of lecture team members, transformed into an eternal spiritual beacon pointing the way forward.

Let Young Officers and Soldiers Become Torchbearers

■ Yu Pengfei

Today, young officers and soldiers are growing up in an era of information explosion and pluralistic thought, and they easily feel a sense of distance from one-way indoctrination and conceptual lecturing. How can Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military (习近平强军思想) truly enter the mind and heart, and be seen in action and results? The vivid practice of the Army Engineering University "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team provides a powerful answer: only by激发 activating the agency of youth, and making officers and soldiers the protagonists of education, can the internal driving force of ideological and political education be activated.

Transform the audience into the subject—active participation is what generates vitality. The key breakthrough point for ideological and political education in the new era lies in激发 activating the internal driving force of those being educated. The "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team has broken the traditional model of "instructor lectures, cadets listen," driving young officers and soldiers from "listening below the stage" to "speaking from the stage," becoming discoverers, narrators, and disseminators of stories. In order to tell stories well, members proactively go deep into frontline units, conduct in-depth interviews with those who lived through events, carefully simulate battlefield scenarios, and repeatedly refine compelling details. This process itself is a profound tempering of thought and a spiritual baptism. When peers share sincerely from personal experience, education is no longer external indoctrination but is internalized as officers' and soldiers' conscious identification and pursuit.

Transform one-way transmission into interaction—mutual engagement is what makes a single spark start a prairie fire. A successful education must not only be delivered brilliantly but must also be able to ignite the spark in the audience's heart. At "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team sessions, officers and soldiers are often moved to wipe away tears, and listeners who are deeply touched often walk up to the stage on their own initiative to share their own stories. Education thereby forms a virtuous cycle of "the speaker's conviction grows stronger—the listener's heart resonates—the transmitter acts with conscious purpose," achieving the passing and continuation of the flame.

Today, the footprint of the "Red Torch" Strong-Army Story Lecture Team has spread across frontier outposts, grassroots companies and battalions, and schools across the country. In recent years, the team has continuously expanded its educational terrain, co-building educational bases with seven red-themed venues. The lecture team's flag and emblem have been collected by the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution.

The essence of ideological and political education lies not in filling a container but in kindling a flame and illuminating the path of the heart. When young officers and soldiers truly become the protagonists of the educational stage, when vivid stories become the living vehicle for arming minds with theory, when sincere interaction replaces one-way lecturing, strong-army stories are no longer distant legends but become vivid practice that officers and soldiers can feel and touch around them—a living model for forging the soul and nurturing people (铸魂育人) in the new era.

Altay's Winter Is Very "Warm"

■ Yang Aoqi, Platoon Leader of a Certain Unit

"Altay's winter temperatures can drop as low as minus 58 degrees Celsius; it is known as China's 'Second Pole of Cold.'" A year ago, I described this land from the lecture stage. Below, pairs of attentive eyes looked up at me. Now, I have gone from narrator of the story to a person inside the story.

When I first took up my battle position, the cold wind cut like a blade. Before, it was "watching others hold the line"; now, it is "I myself must endure." The first time I led a team to execute field communications support training, the temperature plummeted to more than minus 40 degrees Celsius. Within half an hour, violent headaches, numb limbs, and ear pain like needle pricks came in waves; every breath felt like swallowing ice shards. As platoon leader, with soldiers' trusting eyes at my back, I had no choice but to stand firm.

Just as I was gritting my teeth to hold on, a squad leader quietly moved close. His hat brim and scarf were encrusted with ice crystals and icicles, his face barely recognizable. He said softly: "Platoon leader, it's your first winter here—it's completely normal not to be adapted. If you're really cold, jump around, smile, rub your hands, touch your ears, and the warmth will come." Looking at the sincere smiles of comrades in the wind and snow, I felt the chill in my chest quietly dissipate.

I had imagined that guarding the border meant riding horses through snow and patrolling the frontier; only after truly putting down roots here did I understand that technical support is equally critical. Faced with unfamiliar communications equipment and complex circuit diagrams, I—once a theoretical backbone—became a technical novice. The veteran squad leaders held nothing back, teaching hand-in-hand the essentials of wiring, frequency adjustment, and troubleshooting. Their hands, covered in thick calluses, silently told of hardship. I asked: "How many times does it take to get calluses like these?" The veteran smiled calmly: "Hundreds, thousands of times, I suppose. When a mission comes, there's no room for hesitation—you must be fast, accurate, and steady!" They have studied communications technology for more than a decade, long since reaching a state of mastery, able to operate with precision even with their eyes closed, yet they still diligently pursue more efficient networking methods. "Technology changes, missions change—we cannot sleep on our existing skills." Plain words, conveying a scalding drive to improve.

Late at night, as I organized equipment logs in the equipment room, a knock came at the door. A soldier came in carrying a bowl of freshly brewed hot ginger tea: "Platoon leader, drive out the cold!" As I cradled the bowl, the rising steam instantly blurred my vision.

In that moment, I deeply felt that what I had described from the lecture stage was, in the end, far too thin. The "warmth" of Altay is by no means the reading on a thermometer—it is condensed in a word of care spoken in wind and snow, inscribed in the thick calluses on an old squad leader's hands, rising from a bowl of scalding ginger tea, and rooted even more deeply in these officers' and soldiers' burning, unwavering commitment and relentless pursuit of their duty and mission. This warmth flowing from the depths of the spirit is enough to withstand the harshest cold in the world.