On the morning of November 6, Sang Lu, a post chief of a military unit stationed in Guangxi frontier, made a phone call to his girlfriend hundreds of kilometers away for the first time from the post. He said delightedly: "The conversations with my girlfriend will not be overheard again by others from now on."

　　This was what happened when program-controlled telephones were installed at Sang's and other posts. He and his men were posted deep into the mountains where post and communications were very inconvenient. In other parts of China, postal mails can reach their destinations within just one week or so. But they had to wait for several months because they normally came down from the mountains every several months to collect the mails. Last year, a soldier was demobilized from the post and Sang volunteered to fill the position. A few days later, he was told over interphone by his company headquarters that a letter arrived from his financee. To know what she had written in the letter, he had to ask his headquarters to read it to him over interphone. Everything in the letter had to be read out including "my sweetheart". The next day, he set out early to send a reply to the letter, only to encounter landslide after an hour of heavy rain. He clung up to a tree to avoid being washed down into the valley. After that, he had to turn around and return to the post.

　　The Party committee of the unit this year made solving grassroots soldiers' difficulties one of its priorities, as required by the "Three Represents" important thought, and installed telephones at each post and bought umbrellas, water purifiers and better satellite signal receivers for all the sentry posts.

　　By Li Hongxing and Meng Rong

　　(November 21, PLA Daily)