Song of Integrity and Righteousness (清风正气歌) | One Man's Two "Long Marches"

One Man's Two "Long Marches"

■ Zhao Leixiang

At 23:08 on May 24, the Long March-2F Yao-23 carrier rocket carrying the Shenzhou-23 crewed spacecraft roared into the sky. Crimson flames tore through the night, illuminating the letters "CZ"—standing for "Long March" (长征)—emblazoned on the milky-white rocket body, making them gleam brilliantly.

That China's aerospace community inscribed "Long March," this iconic cultural totem, onto their rockets carries profound meaning. Gazing at the rocket body as it flew ever farther away, people could not help but think of a man who undertook the "Long March" twice—Sun Jixian.

The first time was May 1935, when Sun Jixian, then serving as a battalion commander, followed the Central Red Army on the Long March to the banks of the Dadu River. The Dadu River was one of the most treacherous passes along the Red Army's Long March route, known since ancient times as a "natural barrier." Chiang Kai-shek massed heavy forces, attempting to use this natural obstacle to encircle and annihilate the Red Army, boasting that he would make the Red Army "a second Shi Dakai."

The Red Army's only hope at that moment was to force a crossing. When advance force commander Liu Bocheng and political commissar Nie Rongzhen entrusted Sun Jixian with this mission—one that bore on the Red Army's very survival—he replied without hesitation: "Never mind ten Shi Dakais or nine Shi Dakais—we will cross that river!" Sun Jixian personally selected 17 warriors to form a river-crossing assault team.

What followed was a heart-stopping charge into the jaws of death. The wooden boat was like a lone leaf, pushing forward through whirlpools under a hail of enemy fire. Red Army soldiers did their utmost to stay concealed while returning fire toward the opposite bank. When the Red Army rushed onto the riverbank, the enemy frantically hurled grenades and rolling mines down from above. Sheltered in the dead angles of the steep, towering embankment steps, the Red Army charged upward and ultimately routed the defending enemy.

Sun Jixian led the 17 warriors and, with a fighting spirit of heroic tenacity and fearlessness in the face of sacrifice, tore open a breach with their own flesh and blood, opening a path northward for the Red Army.

Twenty-two years later, Sun Jixian—by then Deputy Commander of the 20th Army Corps of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army—returned to China to receive a new assignment. This was a new "Long March." What Sun Jixian faced was no longer guns and a river, but the vast desert stretching to the horizon in the heartland of the motherland: starting from scratch, to establish China's first comprehensive missile test range.

Nie Rongzhen once again assigned him the mission: "We must now walk the Long March road of scientific and technological development—we must climb the 'snow mountains' of cutting-edge science and cross the 'Dadu River' of the new era. This is a matter of great consequence for the future of the military and the nation… It is something that can only be scaled through hard and painstaking effort." Sun Jixian responded on the spot: "Die on the Gobi, be buried on the green hills." In the early days of establishing the test range, he called on everyone at the base to economize on food and reduce the burden on the state. On one occasion, he learned that in addition to their regular standard wages, personnel working at the base also received a certain supplementary allowance from the state. He made his position unequivocal: he would draw only the local standard wage—not a single extra fen of any other allowance.

Developing the missile program was not a matter of days or months; to sustain the work over the long term, it was necessary to put down roots in the Gobi. To that end, Sun Jixian worked alongside officers and soldiers, wielding shovels and pickaxes, and built in the Gobi desert a reservoir covering 9.25 square kilometers with a water storage capacity of 17 million cubic meters.

During that period, he and the officers and soldiers carried forward the outstanding tradition of fearing neither bloodshed nor sacrifice, and of willingly enduring great hardship and heavy toil. On a stretch of wasteland where not a blade of grass grew, they built China's first comprehensive missile test range. Later, this place acquired a name more widely known—Dongfeng Space City (东风航天城).

In 1990, Sun Jixian died of illness. He was buried at the Dongfeng Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery, and a portion of his ashes was scattered into the Dadu River, so that he might rest forever in the place where he had fought during his "Long March."

Beneath the same canopy of stars, the Long March of our forebears and our own journey of struggle have never been separated. When the sky is once again streaked with the trail of exhaust flames, and the thunderous roar shakes the heavens like ten thousand catties of wind and thunder, it seems to echo across more than 90 years: "Feeling the hardship? Think of the Long March's 25,000 li."

Today, people have grown accustomed to calling those long and arduous tasks "Long Marches," and to calling difficult challenges "Dadu Rivers," "Loushan Passes," and "Lazikou Passes." These place names, once cold and bare, have gradually become spiritual symbols through the struggle and sacrifice of generation after generation—the source of backbone that allows this country and this nation to stand tall even in the most difficult of times.

The waters of the Dadu River still surge onward, and the vast starry sky still awaits our exploration. Sun Jixian's two "Long Marches" serve as a clear mirror, allowing us to see plainly what loyalty is, what courage is, what sacrifice is, what nobility is, what excellence is… These are precisely what we need to walk the Long March road of the new era well, and they will surely inspire us to achieve new accomplishments on the new journey!