Eating in the wind

　　The 1,780 km long national boundary runs through the unpopulated area of snowy mountains and vast forest on the northwest border of China. In the early spring of 1997, a mapping detachment of the Xinjiang Military Area Command started to carry out field exploration and survey in 6 groups upon order. For more than 3 years, over 40 mapping officers and men have tailed in snowy mountains, desert, Gobi and morass with equipment and racks on their shoulders and backs. One after another, new boundary tablets have stood along the boundaries, and with them, there are a number of moving stories.　

　　Every boundary tablet is a witness to the painstaking efforts of the mapping officers and men. They love the boundary tablet more than themselves. The No.306 boundary tablet is the highest one along China and Kazakhstan border. The real measure altitude is 3649.8 meters. The boundary tablet is on the top of the cliff, which even animals can hardly reach. The joint exploration team employed a helicopter to deliver 7 mapping persons, the boundary tablet, sand, stone, reinforcing bars and cement to the reference point. In order not to damage the granite boundary tablet, the 7 persons enwrapped the stone with their leather coat and carried it to the reference point….

　　Beiwan is located along the Ertis River where mosquitoes and insects flocked and is crowned as one of the four mosquito and insect kingdoms in the world. Once a cow of a frontier defense company was bitten to death by mosquitoes there. One of the boundary tablets along the China and Kazakhstan border is to be planted in the boskage located right in the middle of the mosquito kingdom. Due to the grids of the mosquito hood often superpose with the marks of the measure devices, the mapping persons often take off the hood to carry out measurement. The traces of mosquito bite on some of their faces are still visible after 3 months. Cao Wei, who graduated from the PLA Information Engineering University, had to put off the date to take wedding photo because of that.