Strong Military Culture Special Issue · Cultural Review | Art Depicts the Spiritual Legacy of Medical Personnel
Situational Dance "The Laundry Squad Devoted Wholly to the Public" — Art Depicts the Spiritual Legacy of Medical Personnel
■ Chang Chenyue, Qi Haocheng
To the accompaniment of melodious music, the situational dance (情景舞蹈) "The Laundry Squad Devoted Wholly to the Public," created and staged by the Joint Logistic Support Force's No. 945 Hospital, recently held its premiere at the Xining Joint Logistic Support Center auditorium. The performance artistically recounts the moving story of military medical personnel making quiet contributions in ordinary posts.
Taking as its entry point the scene of the hospital's nurses washing clothes for wounded and sick soldiers, the situational dance integrates voiceover narration, historical footage, letter recitations, and other expressive forms to look back on the hospital's glorious history, recreate the working scenes of military medical personnel across different eras, and embody the spiritual pursuit of "serving wounded and sick soldiers wholeheartedly."
In the 1970s, the female soldiers of the laundry squad at the 37th Army Hospital (the predecessor of No. 945 Hospital) distinguished themselves in service and support work for the troops and were awarded the honorary title "Lei Feng's Laundry Squad" by the former Chengdu Military Region. Their deeds were made into a black-and-white documentary film, "The Laundry Squad Devoted Wholly to the Public," by the August First Film Studio in 1977 and released for public screening. The situational dance opens with a clip from that documentary, paired with low and gentle background music, presenting to the audience the busy figures of the laundry squad's female soldiers. The scrubbing, beating, and drying motions, and the optimism and resilience reflected in their smiles, also set an unadorned and sincere emotional tone for the entire performance.
On stage, the lights gradually brightened. "When it's sunny, hurry and dry; when it rains, hurry and collect; if it's not clean, do it again; if it falls, wash it over…" Twelve performers, wooden basins in hand, moved with light steps, using dance movements to recreate the working scenes of the laundry squad's female soldiers from those years.
As a uniform stained with blood was lifted from a basin by one of the laundry squad's female soldiers, the lively melody came to an abrupt halt. In the flickering of the lights, the audience's thoughts seemed to return to a battlefield shrouded in the smoke of war. In those years, the hospital's predecessors formed surgical teams and rushed to the front lines to carry out combat trauma treatment. Conditions at the front were harsh — there were no fixed operating rooms; temporary air-raid shelters and makeshift refuges served as operating theaters. Lacking adequate medical equipment and sufficient medicines, they improvised with whatever was at hand, overcame every difficulty, and raced against death itself…
Stage performance and historical memory illuminated each other. As the music gradually rose again, the laundry squad's female soldiers bent back to their work, and the motions of scrubbing clothes became uniform and solemn. Old photographs of the surgical teams were displayed on the backdrop screen; at center stage, a performer recited with deep feeling a letter from the front: "Everything for victory…"
From laundry girls to warriors in white, what changed was the era's setting and the mission at hand; what did not change was the sincere original aspiration of "serving the troops, dedicating oneself to war."
Time flowed on. The stage lights came up one by one, and the voiceover rose with the lights.
"Her name is Xiao Guo — the 'ray of sunshine' of the squad. In 2008, amid the ruins of the earthquake zone in Wenchuan, she went nearly three days and three nights without sleep…"
"Her name is Xiao Li — the youngest in the squad when she enlisted. That year, she held firm on the front line of the epidemic fight. The pressure marks on her face are the most beautiful 'battle-against-the-epidemic imprints (战疫印记)' in her heart…"
On the backdrop screen, photograph after photograph recreated one moving scene after another. The transmission of spirit (精神传承) became, in that moment, all the more tangible.
Then the music drove the performance to its climax. The performers stood at attention and cried out together: "We today still fight for victory!" Applause from the audience continued for a long time.