On November 28, in the club of the No. 9 Tank Company of an armored regiment of the Shenyang Military Area Command, over 200 officers and men gathered at the evening party coded as "I'm a soldier", the splendid performance of the soldiers' band highlighted the evening.

　　In the early October, the regiment branched out the activity of "I contribute an idea to the recreational activities in the regiment". One day, a letter from a soldier of the No. 9 company attracted the attention of the political commissar of the regiment Hu Chongtao. The letter read: "I'm a music-lover. One day in the rehearsal in the club, I saw a lot of musical instruments left unused in the warehouse. What a waste! I hope leaders of our regiment can pay attention to this problem and put these musical instruments to use as soon as possible".

　　After reading the letter, Hu hurried to the warehouse to see the situation. What he saw was various dust-covered musical instrument cases of various sizes. Some instruments in the cases lost paint and some even had no strings or keys, and spots of rust dotted the surface of the instruments. Hu was somewhat shocked. He immediately went to the publicity section to learn the reason and was told that when the instruments were distributed to the regiment by higher department concerned, some officers of the section thought they were top-grade appliances and no one knew how to play them, but they were too costly and should be kept well, so they were put on the shelf in the warehouse.

　　Was it true that there were no cultural talents in the regiment?　Hu and some officers of the regiment had a in-depth investigation. Soon he learned that there were 3 recruits who used to play for cultural troupes before joining the army, there were another 4 graduated from arts schools, and every company had some soldiers who knew music. Then Hu came to the conclusion that there were cultural talents in companies, but they were not identified and used accordingly. In only two months, an amateur band of soldiers came into being in the regiment and the idle instruments were put to use. From then on, the band could be seen frequently to give performances to soldiers of the regiment.

　　By Li Jingwei and Wang Shaobo

　　(December 12, PLA Daily)