On His Final Journey, He Still Pressed Forward for Family and Nation
Fourteen years ago today, in a ward at Xi'an Tangdu Hospital, a gaunt old man wearing an oxygen mask forced his ailing body upright and sat at a desk to work. The glow of a computer screen fell across his graying brows and hair; the room was utterly still, broken only by the intertwined sounds of a mouse clicking and a cardiac monitor beeping — these were the final hours of Academician Lin Junde, age 74.
Lin Junde was born in 1938 in a remote mountain village in Yongchun, Fujian. His father died young, leaving his mother to raise five children alone in grinding poverty. He dropped out before finishing primary school to farm the land, yet he never abandoned the pursuit of knowledge. In the dim light of an oil lamp, secondhand books picked up wherever he could find them were his only solace.
The dawn of New China illuminated the path forward for this boy from a poor family. With the help of a state scholarship, Lin Junde returned to the classroom.
In 1955, Lin Junde was admitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Zhejiang University, where, supported by the state, he studied diligently and completed his degree with distinction. "Children of the poor learn to shoulder responsibility early" — the hardships of life taught him that without the Communist Party, he would have had nothing. Carrying that sense of gratitude, Lin Junde always threw himself into his work with exceptional intensity.
In the year he graduated, he swore an oath to serve the motherland, chose to enlist, and entered the Harbin Military Engineering Institute to pursue advanced study in nuclear testing.
Shortly after enlisting, Lin Junde was assigned to the Malan Base to participate in the development of China's first atomic bomb. With a heart set on serving the nation, he walked into Lop Nor — known as the "Sea of Death."
Deep in the Gobi of the northwest, yellow sands rolled endlessly across a vast and uninhabited expanse.
At the time, foreign technology was blockaded and there was no domestic experience to draw upon. Lin Junde led his team to start from scratch, developing a clockwork-type pressure self-recording instrument that provided critical data for the detonation of China's first atomic bomb, an achievement that earned a State Science and Technology Progress Award. That year, he was only 26 years old — just four years out of Zhejiang University.
From that point on, he remained rooted in the desert Gobi.
[Photo caption: Lin Junde at work. Image source: China Military Network]
Fifty-two years spent alongside the desert: he broke through multiple core technologies; received 2 State Invention Awards, 3 State Science and Technology Progress Awards, and 27 military and ministerial-level science and technology progress awards; was cited for meritorious service once at the first-class level, once at the second-class level, and twice at the third-class level; in 1987, he was honored to attend the All-Army Congress of Heroes and Model Figures; in 1990, he was designated by the state as an outstanding young and middle-aged expert with exceptional contributions; in 1999, he attended the commendation conference for scientists who made outstanding contributions to the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" program; in 2001, he was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering……
Then, in May 2012, Lin Junde's condition deteriorated. After a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, he was transferred to the ICU. When he regained consciousness, he said, weakly but with resolve: "There is no computer here, and visiting hours are limited — I cannot work. Please transfer me back to a general ward." When doctors urged him to remain under observation, he shook his head with great difficulty: "Lying here like this is worse than dying. I would rather have one day of quality than ten days without it."
[Photo caption: The gravely ill Lin Junde (second from right) insisting on working. Image source: screenshot from CCTV's "National Memory" program]
On the afternoon of May 30, his body was threaded with tubes, yet he still sat at his desk for hours at a stretch. So as not to be disturbed, he twice demanded that his drainage tube and nasogastric tube be removed, his voice very soft but brooking no argument: "Working with tubes in me puts me off my game. What I need is time and efficiency." His family quietly wiped away tears; he kept his eyes fixed on the screen — inside it lay his final concerns.
On May 31, 2012, Academician Lin Junde completed the last stretch of his life's journey. From diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma to death: only 27 days. Throughout those 27 days, he treated the hospital ward as a battlefield and his laptop computer as his final weapon, fighting until the very moment the flame of his life was extinguished.
The green waveform on the monitor gradually flattened into a straight line — he gave his last heartbeat, together with a lifetime of wisdom and loyalty, unreservedly to the motherland. From Malan in Lop Nor to a hospital bed in Beijing, from the detonation of the first atomic bomb to bending over his desk in his final hours, he spent his entire life giving meaning to the words: "Do deeds that shake the heavens and the earth; be a person who buries their name in anonymity (干惊天动地事，做隐姓埋名人)." His heartbeat has stopped, but the nuclear shield he planted in the Gobi will stand guard over the motherland forever.
Text: Fu Yingying
Poster: Wang Xun