The song of youth on the snowy plateau (for the young people here) training. Fan Pengli | Cannon | Youth

The female soldier is performing a gun suit on and off operation.

Group photo of female artillery squad members.

The above pictures are all taken by Lai Bo

In the snowy hinterland of July, the cold wind still howls. Standing in the distance, the grassland extends towards the distant sky, with undulating mountains at the end, and the snow on the mountaintop complements the blue sky and white clouds. This is a magnificent spectacle that many people will never see in their lifetime, and Fan Pengli has already regarded it as ordinary. She serves in the women's artillery squad and conducts field training here almost every year. The vegetation, mountains and forests here have long been deeply imprinted in the heart of this Guangdong girl.

The women's artillery squad she served in the Xizang Military Region was established in 2015 and was once named the "National March 8th Red Flag Collective". Now, this team with an average age of 24.5 is playing their own women's battle song on the snowy plateau.

They love arms more than they love attire.

"Why 'don't love red clothes and love weapons'?"

For members of the women's artillery squad, this is the most frequently asked question. But the answers given by these girls from all over the world are difficult to summarize in a single sentence.

Fan Pengli, born in 1994, is already the oldest soldier in the class. After graduating from school, Fan Pengli came across a notice of enlistment by chance. He had a sudden idea and volunteered to join the army. Unexpectedly, he worked in the snowy plateau for over 8 years

Jia Rufei, the current class monitor, had set his sights on joining the military early on. She chose to enlist as she was about to graduate from university. The interviewer asked her, "Do you dare to go to Xizang?" The girl, who was just 20 years old at that time, answered with clenched teeth. This Shandong girl, born in 1997, bid farewell to the sea breeze of her hometown and embrace the cold winds of the plateau

Zhou Chenchen, a relatively tall "Chongqing girl", is a post-00s generation. Her university has a tradition of enlisting in the military. As a newcomer to college, she can't muster the energy to study. One day, she accidentally met her senior brothers and sisters who had enlisted and returned from school, and suddenly realized that she couldn't waste her college time like this. She chose to enlist like those elder martial brothers and sisters and came to Xizang

Coming from different places with different intentions, these girls were melted into qualified warriors in the hot military camps on the snowy plateau.

On the first day of reporting to Lhasa, Jia Rufei was captivated by Fan Pengli's "sash" - "That's what I imagined a female soldier would look like." Years later, Jia Rufei still remembers the first time she saw Fan Pengli: with crisp short hair, walking with a gust of wind, speaking and acting with determination, exuding a sense of competence both inside and outside.

"I am your new recruit squad leader, and during this period, your training will be arranged by me..." Fan Pengli's words still lingered in his ears, and the rigorous training came immediately. Sports, wrestling... These already intense trainings have brought a heavier physical burden to Jia Rufei on the plateau. Watching Fan Pengli and others demonstrate, Jia Rufei followed suit and did the training exercises, thinking only about doing them quickly and accurately. When I returned to the barracks to rest, I realized that my body was covered in bruises and bruises, and it was painful to be next to the bed board.

But Jia Rufei did not give up. The dream of becoming a 'confident' female soldier like Fan Pengli has always supported her. "Once, I just longed for the military camp. As for what kind of person I wanted to be, I actually had no real feelings until I met the class monitor," she said.

For Zhou Chenchen, born in the 2000s, military life also brings a challenge, which is to maintain distance from mobile phones. Before enlisting, she had been with her phone all along. Lying in bed in the dormitory and playing with her phone all day was once the norm in her life. However, on the first day of enlistment, her phone was managed according to regulations.

Accustomed to the colorful college life, the training days seem simple and boring. But precisely because of this simplicity, the memories of those auspicious moments were particularly clear and clear in Zhou Chenchen's mind. In December 2019, the third month of training happened to be her 19th birthday. That time, Fan Pengli and Jia Rufei left the camp and bought cakes specifically for Zhou Chenchen. The comrades in the barracks cooked longevity noodles for her. Eating the noodles cooked by his comrades and the birthday cake specially bought, Zhou Chenchen was deeply moved in his heart.

Due to the significant compression of mobile phone usage time, Zhou Chenchen, who used to keep his phone close, even forgot the power on password for his phone at one point. Despite multiple unsuccessful attempts, she could only ask the class monitor at the time, Jia Rufei, to call her family and ask if they remembered her phone password. On New Year's Eve, the family received a phone call from Zhou Chenchen, filled with joy in contacting their daughter and couldn't help but laugh at her experience - "It turns out that military life can really cure children's old problem of relying on mobile phones."

But Zhou Chenchen knew very well that after a long absence from her family, her changes were far more than that - she was no longer the naive college student, but a soldier, a soldier belonging to the glorious collective "Women's Artillery Squad".

"We don't love red clothes, we just love 'armed' more," Fan Pengli said. "Saying goodbye to red clothes and embracing armed, each of us has a different original intention. But it is our experience in the military that has shaped our love and loyalty to the military camp, bringing us people from all over the world together as a collective."

Who says women are not as good as men

"Resident training, in my imagination, should be like the common saying of wilderness survival, climbing mountains and trees, and finding food and drink for oneself. It should be very interesting, right?" Liu Shan, a new soldier from the artillery squad who was just starting out on the plateau, was full of fantasies about wilderness residency training.

She didn't understand why the veteran squad leader showed a meaningful smile at the time, until she truly arrived at the training ground - the tent construction work on the first day of training, which shattered Liu Shan's imagination.

Toilets, residential tents, laundry rooms, etc. need to be distinguished from male soldiers, so the task of setting up tents for female soldiers is more arduous than that of male soldiers. In order to ensure accommodation at night, the female soldier team needs to complete the construction of four tents before dark, including digging pits, leveling soil, repairing drainage channels, laying camouflage nets, and completing the placement of facilities inside the tents. When the female soldiers arrived at the training ground, it was already 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

The rocket launcher arrived at the designated position according to plan, and shortly after everyone deployed their vehicles, a hail hit them head-on and head-on.

"All guns quickly withdraw their vehicles and do a good job of concealment!" Upon receiving instructions, the female soldiers in the artillery squad quickly took action. In order not to affect the operation speed, they didn't even wear raincoats, so they climbed up to the roof of the car to install gun coats. Due to the low temperature, hail falls on the gun armor and cannot melt quickly, making it more difficult to transport the already heavy gun armor. "One, two, come on!" With everyone's concerted efforts, we finally successfully completed the concealed disguise work within the specified time and returned to the car.

Carrying out various operations on the plateau is a physical challenge, especially for women. However, the female soldiers in the artillery squad refused to admit defeat: "We just want to do better than the male soldiers!"

On one occasion, a department of the Xizang Military Region where the artillery squad was located was going to carry out a professional and comprehensive training contest in remote fire. Fan Pengli, the then squad leader, suggested to the company that she lead the female gunners to compete with the male squad on the same stage.

"Class monitor, can we win the competition with the male soldier class?" Zhou Chenchen was uncertain in his heart.

"Don't be afraid! No problem!" Fan Pengli has been working in the Far Fire major for 6 years. She knows that this competition is not only a competition of individual professional skills, but also a collaborative competition of the whole class. "We are all college student soldiers, with professional skills and a high level of understanding," she said.

Preparing for the martial arts competition, Fan Pengli has only one requirement, which is to be fast! "'Quick 'is the life of the artillery!"

If you want to be "fast", you need everyone to "stay connected" and work together. But they often make mistakes during the training of positioning and filling: sometimes it is a team cooperation error, not being able to hang the hanging arm in place at once; Sometimes it's the gunner who takes too long to center, or the ammunition is not hoisted in time

"6 gunners, when hanging in the air, the throttle speed of the directional valve should be faster and the connection should be smoother... Everyone should do a good job of advance measurement and compress the action time..." Fan Pengli repeatedly called for training to stop, pointed out and corrected everyone's problems in the operation process, and guided everyone to improve and perfect step by step. This extremely physically demanding exercise needs to be repeated several times a day. But no one feels bored, no one dares to slack off, and everyone doesn't want to drag down the collective due to their own reasons.

The day of the martial arts competition has finally arrived.

The overall performance of female soldiers in other assessments is almost the same as that of male soldiers. But when establishing communication and networking with the command vehicle, the new recruit Chen Fengjiao made a small mistake due to being too nervous, which caused his link to be slower than usual and delayed for a few minutes. The opponent took the lead, and they saw it in their eyes and were anxious - they had to load several rockets in total, and a few minutes of delay almost meant that the opponent had won ahead of time.

Fan Pengli immediately adjusted his mindset and said, "Steady, we can do it!" According to their usual training, each of them is carefully operating in their own position, striving to achieve the ultimate in their movements. Sweat streaked through their tanned faces, and a determined and composed light flickered in their eyes. A series of precise and error free operations, 1, 2, 3 shots... When the third "click" sound sounded and the filling was completed, they achieved a reverse super. Without time to celebrate, they heard the order and moved, catching their opponents off guard in the smoke and dust.

In the end, the women's artillery team successfully completed the task in the first time and won the first place in this competition.

Nowadays, the development of intelligent and information-based equipment is both an opportunity and a challenge for female soldiers. It shortens the power gap between male and female soldiers, but also requires them to have more comprehensive knowledge of artillery. They work hard to learn those obscure and difficult to understand mechanical knowledge, follow the experts and masters of the manufacturer to dig deeper, follow the artillery technicians to crawl under the car, check the wiring, summarize experience in troubleshooting, and test results in live fire shooting. "For the women's artillery class, there is only knowledge that has not been learned yet, and there are no difficulties that cannot be solved!" Fan Pengli's tone was firm.

"Who says women are not as good as men?" This is not a slogan for the girls in the women's artillery class, but a belief that is melted into everyone's heart.

The Best Years of Youth

Four years ago, as a conscripted soldier, Fan Pengli had the opportunity to choose to continue working in the army or to retire and return home. That was already her second time choosing to stay.

In the military, there is a lifestyle that she is accustomed to and loves, but there are also family members to take care of at home; Returning home from the military, with guaranteed health and more opportunities to take care of the family, but also facing an unfamiliar pace of life

"I can stay here for a few more years to help more young people grow up and then leave."

Entering the military does not mean leaving society. Every year when returning home for vacation, Fan Pengli observes the differences between himself and his peers. Her home is in Guangdong, where there is a strong business atmosphere and many classmates are busy with their own careers and businesses. "Income", "profit", "efficiency"... These words are the ones that Fan Pengli heard the most in his hometown.

"Of course all of these are good, but I just don't like them," she thought. Years of military service have made her more interested in public utilities. She has been pondering whether she should work at the grassroots level if she returns to her hometown in the future, so that she can do more specific things for the villagers in her hometown.

During her time in the military, she also enjoyed watching TV dramas online in her leisure time, just like a girl of the same age. However, her "idol" is Huang Wenxiu, the protagonist of the TV series "Daughter of the Mountains". "Many people don't want to go back after leaving the countryside, but there always needs to be someone who comes back, and I am the one who comes back." Fan Pengli was deeply impressed by Huang Wenxiu's words, and one day she wants to be like Huang Wenxiu, the one who goes back home and serves her hometown.

Almost every girl in the artillery class will face similar choices. Jia Rufei remembered that in the first two years of her enlistment, her unit had been performing garrison missions in Xizang. At that time, her life was very different from what she imagined, which made her want to go.

However, an outing that she couldn't forget - at that time, her unit was stationed in the wilderness, and she and her comrades worked hard to build a barracks and prepared to station there. During the night shift, as she walked out of her tent, she saw a magnificent sight that was unforgettable in her life - the sky and earth were vast and lonely, the four fields were silent, and the huge Milky Way in the night sky hung upside down, as if pouring over her head. In the distance, a towering snow mountain pierces straight into the sky, shining with the Milky Way above it.

At this moment, looking at the snow capped mountains in the distance, the young girl felt an unprecedented sense of authenticity in her responsibilities: "Once, a map was like a piece of paper to us; now, I know that the vast mountains in front of us are the true frontier of our motherland."

She chose to stay in the military once, twice... she was extending her service period, hoping to do the best she could with what she was doing.

For Chen Fengjiao, staying in the army also means facing pressure from his family.

Chen Fengjiao registered to join the military without telling his family. When she told her family the news of joining the military, their faces were full of incomprehension. Especially when he learned that Chen Fengjiao was going to Xizang to become a soldier, his family firmly opposed it. "Why do you want to join the army, a little girl? Isn't that a boy's business?" "If you damage your body, who will take care of your parents?" In the family group, elders often advise Chen Fengjiao.

Considering her parents and family, Chen Fengjiao feels that she will eventually go back, but she does not regret her choice. "I am in charge of my youth. Spending a few years on the border, doing what the country needs the most in the most needed places, is the most romantic way I can think of to spend my youth," she said.

Even if one day they were to leave, their military career would be deeply imprinted on these girls. More profound things are engraved in the minds of female soldiers. Fan Pengli said, "The time in the women's artillery class was the best youth of my life. The life here taught me what honor and collective are, and what dedication and sacrifice are. Everything here will be a war song that echoes forever in my youth memories."

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