Let's talk about our Miao Lian Zu.

  Actually, I didn't stay in the reconnaissance company for a long time, just a few months. But inside, I met many interesting people and had many stories happen, if I were to tell them, it would take three days and three nights to finish.

  Let's talk about our Miao Lianzuo. In Engels' words, it is "a typical character in a typical environment", which is the criterion for creating realistic literary and artistic works. Actually, I really don't want to expose the shortcomings of many so-called military-themed TV dramas - they are too fake. When we watched them back then, we would laugh. If our grassroots cadres were like that, we could have demolished houses without them getting angry, do you believe it? Let's just stop here, otherwise, too many people will get hurt.

  Miao Lianchang is not surnamed Miao, I call him Miao Lianchang because he is of the Miao ethnic group.

  Miao Lianchang was not only the tallest, but also had the longest military service among our company-level officers. At that time, most of the company-level cadres were already graduates of military academies, and the rest were those who took the military academy exam after joining the army. It seemed that only Miao Lianchang was still a soldier promoted from the ranks. So later on, he never mentioned it again. After demobilization, he returned to his hometown and became the head of the anti-riot squad in the public security bureau, fighting against armed drug traffickers and gun smugglers at the border. I thought the local public security leadership was really good at using people - when did he join the army? 14 years old, hadn't even finished primary school. At that time, there were battles going on in the mountains farther south than his hometown, but it had nothing to do with him. He spent his days raising dogs, shooting birds, rabbits, and mountain chickens. At 14, adults still didn't consider him a real hunter, he was just a reserve, living a simple and happy life.

  That day, Xiaomiao walked a bit far from his village, several tens of kilometers away. The weather was good, and Xiaomiao didn't intend to go back. He carried his hunting rifle and followed the dog, wandering around the mountain to see if he could find any wild boars or other animals to hunt and bring back, so that the adults wouldn't say he was too young to join them on their hunting trips for wild boars, leopards, tigers, and the like. (Note: This was in the mid-1980s, when the war in the south had not yet ended, and neither the promoters nor enforcers of wildlife protection laws could enter the mountains, as the military wouldn't allow it, fearing that special agents would infiltrate. The mountain people had been hunting for hundreds of years and wouldn't naturally be animal protectors.) Later, when we went to Yunnan for training, we found that whenever there were poachers, the mountain people would chase them more enthusiastically than anyone else - not because they wanted the reward money, but because once you explained things clearly to them, they would enforce the law without hesitation and deal with those who broke it. The simple folk customs are truly admirable; simple-minded people can be very lovable.) As a result, Xiaomiao walked into a mountain valley and saw a group of people wearing colorful clothes climbing up a cliff, with steel pots on their heads and ropes tied around their waists. Their movements were extremely slow and awkward. Below them, someone with a leather box slung over his waist was shouting and scolding. Xiaomiao had attended primary school for a few days, and his teacher was a sent-down youth, so he could understand Mandarin, although not very well. He laughed and walked past them. The guards below were very vigilant, clicking the safeties off their guns (which Xiaomiao later learned were Type 56 assault rifles) and aiming at him. Xiaomiao took a fright - even an idiot knew what a gun was! The man with the leather box saw him and waved for him to come over. The guards took away his hunting rifle and let him pass, along with the dog. The man with the leather box asked him what he was laughing at.

  Xiao Miao's brain spun around for half a day, organizing those few pitiful Mandarin words, and stuttered: "Yours, no good, stupid."

  Is it okay if I just carry this leather box?

  Xiao Miao: "I won't be able to make it, everyone in our village can go except me."

  He didn't care about the leather box. Xiaomiao said, "I'm better than them." He pointed to those people in colorful clothes on the cliff.

  The leather box said, "Let me see, how do you climb? Let them learn too." The ones above all stopped to watch Xiaomiao climb. Xiaomiao took off his grass shoes and spat some saliva into the palm of his hand to rub it in. Someone came over to tie a rope for Xiaomiao, but after tying it, he untied it again: "No good, no good."

  He hadn't even asked how it was possible, but Xiaomiao had already climbed out several meters! He saw that he was barefoot and his body was tightly attached to the cliff, climbing very quickly - if there was a camera shooting at high speed at that time, you would know that it was the "three-point fixation" free solo rock climbing that everyone who learns rock climbing internationally must learn, Xiaomiao just didn't know these terms, but he had completely practiced and gained true knowledge.

  After Xiaomiao went up, everyone's eyes widened and their mouths grew bigger. The dog below looked very strange, looking left and right, wondering what humans were thinking about. This was a normal thing in its opinion, and Xiaomiao wasn't even considered a master. So it came to the conclusion: Humans are really weird. Then the dog lay down beside it and went to sleep, too lazy to respond to humans.

  The leather suitcase suddenly asked a question: "Do you want to be a soldier?!"

  Xiao Miao joining the army is the best choice - I have to proudly point out that Xiao Miao is one of those people who only has a mother and belongs to a mountain village romantic legend. In his village, no one discriminates against him, everyone likes him, it's just because he's naturally tall, nobody wants to take him hunting, they think he makes too much noise. He doesn't hunt in the village, afterwards he's idle, might as well join the army. His mother is absolutely supportive, children joining the Liberation Army is a big deal in the village, carrying a leather suitcase and those colorful soldiers entering the village everyone wants to send their kids to join the army - as a result, the one carrying the leather suitcase took a liking to Xiao Miao, not because of first impressions, Commander Miao told me it's because there's a kind of spirit in his eyes - I thought he was bragging about himself, I looked for so long and didn't see any spirit, but rather a lot of overbearingness. Commander Miao on the training field just needs to walk and all the brothers in the reconnaissance company will train with their lives on the line, don't even need to shout, he doesn't even need to look at them more than once.

  The process is not important, the result is the most important.

  As a result, Xiao Miao became a soldier and was assigned as a scout.

  Those who wear colorful clothes are the reconnaissance battalion of a military region that came to the front line for rotation, which is our military region. The surname He, who carries a leather box, is a deputy commander of the battalion. Later, this Commander He and I still had dealings, and I will talk about it later.

  Xiao Miao spent a year at the front lines, earning a second-class merit, and then followed the reconnaissance battalion back to the military district. The reconnaissance battalion was about to be disbanded, and Xiao Miao didn't know where to go - he never had an old unit to return to, although many units wanted him, but Xiao Miao had set his sights on He Zhongque. People from the mountains value loyalty, and they acknowledge friends. He Zhongque was the reconnaissance battalion commander of our division headquarters, and after being selected for the military district's reconnaissance battalion, he brought Xiao Miao back to the division headquarters, first to the division's reconnaissance battalion. Because he had once carelessly called him a "wild species" during training, the deputy company commander was quickly sent by He Battalion Commander to our regiment's reconnaissance company. From then on, no one dared to provoke him.

  Then came the class leader, platoon leader, deputy battalion commander, and finally the battalion commander. At the battalion commander level, he was stuck and couldn't be promoted anymore - not only because of his credentials, but also because apart from being good at reconnaissance with "one rope and one knife", he didn't know anything else. Later on, my old unit was reorganized into a high-tech infantry division, and he was thoroughly eliminated - times create heroes, and heroes will eventually be eliminated by the times, this is an unshakeable truth since ancient times.

  The first time I served Miao Lianchang to wash his face, I was startled. With a loud noise, an eyeball fell into the basin. Before I could react, he took that eyeball and rinsed it in the clean hot water in the basin, then put it back into his left eye socket. It was only then that I realized his left eye was artificial. At that moment, I felt a surge of emotion and began to understand what it means to be a soldier, what it means to be a tough guy.

  Miao Lianchang never spoke in a low voice, even when family members called him on the phone, he would shout so loudly that everyone in the whole company knew. On the training ground, if he caught anyone being lazy during drills, he would immediately beat up that young officer who had just graduated from military school, and those who came from the ranks were also beaten - but not the soldiers. The platoon leader was afraid to hit the soldiers, otherwise Lianchang would hit the platoon leader too. So all the platoon leaders feared Lianchang, but we all loved him. Can you say that when such a company commander walks onto the training ground, everyone won't train with their lives on the line?

  He had never been to school for a long time, but he was extremely proficient in reconnaissance. He told me that it was just a matter of learning by death, and there was no other way. When we first came back from the war, our Mandarin was almost practiced, but math and science were completely unknown - anyone who has been a soldier knows what math and science mean to a reconnaissance company commander. But he learned, a descendant of a Miao tribe hunter who had never taken a physics or chemistry lesson, and had only studied addition and multiplication tables in math, learned all the math and science knowledge that an excellent reconnaissance company commander should master - and by the time our division underwent its historic transformation, there was no longer anyone who could afford to wait for him to learn high-tech, and it was fundamentally impossible...

  Why did Captain Miao want me? He later told me it was because I had beaten up the class leader, who was also a renowned excellent class leader in the whole regiment, and was considered a god-like figure. It was similar to when he had brutally beaten up the deputy commander of the scout battalion back in his day - something that usually wouldn't be questioned by junior officers, but wasn't entirely unknown either. I had actually beaten up an old comrade, so he had to get to know me. He was a veteran and even the three top officials at the regimental headquarters gave him some respect. First, he looked at my military training scores, then he saw something in my eyes that made him say I was just like him when he was younger. Later on, no matter how hard I looked in the mirror, I couldn't see any resemblance - it was as if I wanted to dig out one of my eyeballs and replace it with a fake one! That's how sincerely our company commander loved me at the time!

  He wanted me to be a clerk, but actually he was trying to torment me, to make me become an excellent scout as soon as possible - what for, he didn't think about it, people like him can't think that much, as long as they feel you're suitable, they'll train you to be a scout first, otherwise, seeing you idle around would make them uncomfortable. Later I really became an excellent scout, only to find out it's even more unbearable, having too much energy with nowhere to use - he doesn't care about this, all he wants is to train you into a scout, so his heart won't feel uncomfortable, can't bear to see materials being wasted. In the army, officers one level higher than you can crush you to death, let alone an old veteran and meritorious captain like him? You think you can't even choose not to practice, who cares what you do in the future, just fulfill his wish first.

  I later left the reconnaissance company, but Commander Miao's impression on me remains fresh.

  When he left the army to go home, he didn't tell me. It was a year later, and at that time I was no longer in our unit's reconnaissance company - He also didn't tell any of his best scouts, he packed up his own luggage, and then the deputy commander sent a car to take him to the station. He insisted on not letting the deputy commander send him into the station, not even the driver could see him off, otherwise they would have fallen out with each other, so he went into the station by himself and left.

  I kept thinking about this image in my mind - a 14-year-old veteran who joined the army, tall and thin, with a fake left eye, a souvenir from the war; wearing a military uniform made of woolen material, without a hat, without yellow epaulets, medals and all rewards were placed at the bottom of the box, that was his glory.

  Walking alone in the bustling crowd.

  From then on, he became an ordinary citizen.

  Because his army no longer wanted him, he had no place. A younger and more cultured company commander replaced him. He was left far behind by the modernization process of the army.

  The car drove away, and the station was empty.

  Return to calmness.