Editor's note: At the "two sessions" each year, NPC deputies and CPPCC members from Chinese armed forces actively put forward bills, proposals and suggestions. We are launching the "NPC deputies and CPPCC members from the military" series, telling stories of some military service persons in fulfilling their duties as NPC deputies or CPPCC members. The following is the first story of the series.
On February 15, there was only 20 days before the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), Colonel Bao Lin, deputy commander of a border brigade of the PLA Army and a deputy to the NPC, stayed at his office till midnight, busy making finishing touches to the proposals he was going to put forward at this year's NPC.
"Whatever you do, excel at it." This is what Bao Lin says often through all these years, no matter he was a college student, or the platoon commander in a border defense sentry post or the commanding officer of an Army brigade today.
Bao Lin's grandfather is a Red Army veteran, who often told his grandson stories about the Red Army soldiers and the battles they ever fought. When graduating from Inner Mongolia University in 2006, Bao Lin turned down the offer to work at the university and became a soldier in a border defense unit of the PLA, realizing his dream of joining the army.
The frontier defense unit in which Bao Lin's military career started in 2006 was stationed in the China-Mongolia border region, where there are only 80 frost-free days a year with an average temperature below zero. Putting himself in such a harsh environment for the first time, Bao Lin, demonstrating the perseverance of a Mongolian man, didn't falter, but pressed ahead and tempered himself there.
He has at his fingertips every mountain peak and every boundary marker under their watch, being known as the "living map".
But he is not born a "living map". When he was new in the ranks, Bao Lin often observed the surrounding environment through a telescope and would check the map with real terrains every time he was out on patrol duty.
Having been in the army for 16 years, Bao Lin has devoted his best years to border defense and has nourished a deep affection for this magnificent land at the far end of Chinese territory. "It is everyone’s duty to strengthen border defense. I'm a soldier, I strive to be the best border guard," said Bao Lin.
