In Bazhong, listen to a tree

The car circled on the eighteen-bend mountain road, climbed over the jungle-drenched mountains of Bashan, drove into the mirror of Shaxi Town, Tongjiang County, and stopped deep in a dense forest. A group of us got out of the car and walked slowly up the mossy stone road. In the pine forest, there are shadows of trees, and there are clumps of green bamboos here and there, showing tenacity in the elegance. There are mushrooms, fungus and other fungi under the tree. A few squirrels are jumping around on the branches. Occasionally, pine cones fall to the ground with a "snap", making a very subtle crunching sound.

Walking in the jungle is like entering a peaceful and beautiful place, quiet, silent, and a little mysterious. The fellow travelers walked with their heads lowered and spoke in silence. Stepping onto this red pilgrimage site was an experience and a journey of spiritual cleansing. I deliberately slowed down my pace and took it easy to go to the appointment of a red memory, but I was afraid of disturbing the tranquility.

On Daba Mountain, every tree is a standing soul with an immortal legend. Perhaps there are still traces of Red Army soldiers under an ancient tree. Perhaps there was a fierce battle in a certain forest. The houses in northern Sichuan with green tiles and white walls hidden among the lush forests are most likely the old Red Army iron factories, wood factories, rope factories, quilt factories, salt factories, shipyards, etc.

Not long after walking up the stairs, we arrived at the Red Army Martyrs Cemetery in the Sichuan-Shaanxi Revolutionary Base Area. More than 25,000 heroes turned themselves into red seeds and took root deeply in this hot land forever. The tall and long Memorial Wall to the Heroes is engraved with 7,823 solemn names, and many more people have not even left their names. Walking around the holy white tombstones, row after row, brilliant white and shining red stars, I was shaken to tears.

Among them, some couples joined the army together, and some fathers and sons went to the battlefield together, but both died. I also heard that an old man in his 80s, accompanied by his family, went through many inquirings and went through many mountains and rivers before arriving at the Martyrs Cemetery. He knelt down tremblingly in front of the tombstone and stroked the words with his hands that echoed thousands of times in his dreams. His name called out "Daddy" for the first time in his life... Groups of descendants of the Red Army and those who witnessed the war came here to commemorate in a simple way. They planted an evergreen tree on the edge of the cemetery on the majestic Bashan Mountain.

There are always some people who will stand under the tree, listen to the tree's breathing over and over again, touch the tree's muscles and bones, and feel nostalgic, weeping, or feeling sentimental. The tree doesn't care about this. It just spreads its branches and leaves, and the branches stretch high upward to face the sky. That handsome figure is just like the appearance of the soldiers back then, honest and resolute.

No one can live longer than a tree. Some of the trees in Daba Mountain have been standing for hundreds of years. They are witnesses of the history of the Red Army. The locals call them "Red Army Pines", "General Trees" and "Fairy Trees". In the ancient town of Maoyu, I saw a saponaria tree, which was once the horse-tying tree of the generals of the Fourth Red Army. One midsummer in the 1970s, it was struck by lightning, and the trunk withered and died. The two halves of the bark were split, but they were close to each other. Half a century of pride has supported a rich green shade.

Trees like to tell their thoughts to the wind and to the clouds. The Red Army at Night Horse Crossing, the Battle of Kongshanba, the surprise attack on Pingliang City... these touching stories have been sung for a long time in the land of Bashu.

If you can’t believe in the wind with wings or the wandering clouds, then you might as well keep an eye out. The red army stone slogans looming in the woods are epic poems carved on the stones. "Reduce the whole Sichuan" "Divide the land equally" "The ax splits the new world, the sickle cuts the old world"... Those blood-stained stone carvings, those shouting stones, are like charging horns, like shining swords, shaking the leaves. The sound made the enemy tremble with fear.

On Nankong Mountain on the outskirts of the city, I met a strange man who can make stones "flower". He is the founder of the Forest of General Steles in the Sichuan-Shaanxi Soviet Area, Zhang Chongyu, who is over seventy years old. One man traveled millions of kilometers for more than 20 years, just for one thing - to carve more than 4,000 pieces of monuments for the soldiers of the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army, so that the names of the heroes became flowers blooming on the stones.

I have been misunderstood and ridiculed by others, but I have never thought of giving up. How broad a heart must be to be so calm, firm, persistent, and unrepentant. When leaving, someone said, Mr. Zhang, I wish you good luck and live like a longevity pine.

He smiled and replied, "Then I will be the patron saint of the Forest of Steles!"

The mountains in Bazhong are interdependent with the water, so there are hydropower stations and substations of various sizes that have been built or are being built here scattered like pearls. I have met many power grid people. They are the people who pluck the silver wire, the people who light the lamps, and they are the contemporary "Prometheus".

It is this group of people who are willing to endure hardship and loneliness, and send the beautiful "Fire Trees and Silver Flowers" to the world. I asked a worker who had just come off the transmission tower: "Why do you want to stay when the conditions are so bad?" He raised his head, looked at me in surprise, and said slowly: "This is an old revolutionary area. So many people died back then. "Man, someone has to do something!"

The winter and summer here are like the two heavens of ice and fire. For power grid builders and maintainers, it is common for them to trek through mountains and rivers, walk in the rain and snow, and make emergency repairs day and night once they encounter rain, snow, and freezing disasters. Therefore, when you meet them, you will feel that men have the composure that has been tempered by time, and women have the elegance that has been accumulated over time.

Wherever the silver lines extend, the power party member service team is inseparable. They gather great love with small kindnesses, knock on the door that closes the darkness, and spread warmth and light. A person's nobility has nothing to do with status, it only depends on the height of the soul, which is the nobility revealed in the bones. Let love beget love, and the world will become better and better.

A member of the party member service team told me about an incident. Once they received a repair call and rushed to the mountainous area overnight to repair the circuits in the villagers' homes. After the power was turned on, an unforgettable scene happened for him: an old Red Army soldier who had been bedridden for many years, with the support of his wife, sat up from the bed, turned sideways, raised his hands, and saluted them with a military salute.

In the vast Bashan, walking through the vast pine forest, I slowed down from time to time and listened quietly, as if they were the notes in the vast acre of pine waves. I leaned over and picked up a pine cone, wanting to take it back and give it to my young daughter, telling her about the red history and the story of Daba Mountain. May the seeds of perseverance sprout in her heart and grow into a tree shrouded in greenery, radiating with the light of life in the lines of poetry where the sun shines.