Balji Wilderness

1

I have been engaged in literary creation for 30 years, and it is the first time that I have experienced such a difficult writing task - interviewing and writing a reportage of the July 16 fire in Dalian. The front and back of the thick interview book are full of handwriting, and some words on it are blurred by the water. I know, those were my tears. During the interview, my clients cried loudly more than once, and I didn't dare to look at them, so I lowered my head and shed tears to wet the words.

It is not just a record of fighting a fire - I gradually became clear in my interviews and writing - fighting the 7.16 fire is a spiritual epic of contemporary Chinese, in which the spiritual content goes beyond the work level of fire fighting and rescue, military duties, it is the light of human will radiated in the face of disaster, is never yielding, is salvation, is love. These supported me to finish this book, and at the same time, I experienced great suffering.

At the scene of the July 16 fire, there was fire on the ground, oil pipelines in the air, underground sewage pipelines, and sea. The fire burned the concrete walls, exposing the steel bars. The fire burned the tin house to a thin sheet, and it fell down at the slightest touch. The intense radiant heat swallows up the oxygen in the air, making it impossible for a person to breathe. And the waves of fire roast people out of layers of sweat, and their bodies are dehydrated. At the scene, people saw a fire that could not be extinguished - the No. 103 tank exploded and caught fire, and this tank stored 100,000 tons of crude oil, which was poured all over the ground, forming a fire field of 60,000 square meters. Flowing fire threatens the surrounding oil tanks. Some of these canisters have been roasted and deformed, and may explode, boil, or splatter in the next minute, creating an even larger, irreversible disaster.

In such a fierce, hellish fire, there are people besides fire. The 2,380 officers and men of the Liaoning Provincial Public Security Fire Brigade were constantly confronted by the fire waves several tens of meters high. The soldiers are only eighteen or nineteen years old, they are post-90s, and they are the only seedlings. Their parents were only forty or fifty years old. Sacrificing their lives to fight and be reborn as a Jedi, these officers and soldiers fought for their lives from death. If another crude oil tank or chemical tank bursts, none of them will be able to escape. I can't imagine the collective death of 2,380 firefighters and more than 2,000 broken families, and the country cannot accept such grief. The bigger problem is that if they fail to successfully extinguish the fire, the disaster suffered by Dalian City and the people of Dalian will be 100 times greater than the loss of officers and men, and it will be a disaster for mankind.

The officers and men fought the fire demon minute by minute, and saved the other oil and chemical tanks from deflagrating again. More than 1,000 officers and men of the Dalian City Public Security Fire Detachment were in the most difficult situation, and they made great contributions, and they waited for the arrival of the province's fire reinforcements with fierce battles, and waited for the arrival of the nation's land, sea and air reinforcements, and waited for the arrival of the decisive battle, and the fire demons were finally subdued.

2

I talked face-to-face with these heroes who had returned from the fire. Sometimes, the mind is in a trance and asks yourself: Who am I talking to? In the Yang World or in the Netherworld? They seem to have been sacrificed, and I'm talking to the spirits of the victims. I really wanted to go up and pinch their shoulders and hold their hands. These are the people who have returned from death, they are the ones who have exhausted their physical strength and gritted their teeth. They have died, and where shall I see these hands? One of the detachment leaders told me: "Oil fires are not afraid of burning, they are afraid of boiling oil tanks. When the boiling happens, the hot oil will splash out like magma, covering the whole body. The person instantly turned into charcoal and maintained his original position. As he spoke, his eyes turned red. In the fire, I have to be closer to the soldiers, and after cleaning up the bones, people will see that I didn't run back, and the detachment leader and the soldiers died together, so that the soldiers' parents know that it is better to feel better. ”

For more than four months, I talked to the firefighters every day about the fire. I interviewed 188 people, and each of them told me about the fire, and each of them spoke for hours. I bore their pain, their despair, their struggle. In the past few months, I have experienced great pain. You listen to the people who have experienced the disaster repeatedly, and you must be responsible. Out of curiosity, a female writer accompanied me to the Liaoyang City Public Security Fire Detachment for an interview and listened to the officers and soldiers talk about the July 16 fire. She only listened for an hour before leaving the room. She said she couldn't stand it, it was too miserable. She advised me not to write, because I would be guilty of interviewing and writing, and I would go crazy.

In fact, I've had countless mental back-offs. I asked myself, what am I trying to do? The disaster of July 16 has passed, and it has become a disaster for me alone. Interviews during the day, nightmares at night, flowing fires hit like waves, turned around and ran, behind them were bigger fires, and the houses collapsed. I often cry in my dreams – I don't realize it, and when I wake up, my pillow is already wet. I hold on for the sake of these warriors, who have won through pain I could never have imagined, and I want to build a monument to them in the words of blood and tears.

We set off from Shenyang at five or six o'clock in the morning to go to various cities, arrived at our destination at seven o'clock, and started our interviews on time at eight o'clock. I don't use a voice recorder, that would be distracting. I put pen to paper and wrote down everything they said. In order to get the fighters to open up and tell their hearts, I used one-on-one interviews instead of focus groups. When the cadres are present, the fighters are restrained. But this way is too labor-intensive. One fighter finished speaking and went out of the house, and another soldier came into the house to tell his story. I will finish my lecture in the morning and will talk about it in the afternoon. I interviewed 14 fire brigades across the province. Starting from the Dalian Public Security Fire Detachment and ending with the Chaoyang Public Security Fire Detachment. During the interview, the detachments prepared a sumptuous lunch and dinner, but I couldn't eat anything, and my head was full of fire. The soldiers said that the metal lampposts were bent over by the fire, and the oil fire burned in the sewers, and the metal manhole covers burst into the sky, and the manhole covers burned red. There was no water in the fire ground, and the detachments rushed for water. They survived because there was water and foam in the fire truck, but the fire was powered off, there was no water source, and the foam ran out. Fortunately, there is still seawater. These scenes flashed through my mind like a movie, and I couldn't remember what I had eaten in the various detachments.

3

I could write a novel in four months, and I had only finished the preliminary interview for the book. In terms of remuneration, I'm not a good deal. Interviews and writing have stopped me from writing columns, lecturing and collecting styles, but they have enriched my spiritual world. It made me know every detail of human beings in the face of death and physical limits, knew that the firefighters radiated the brilliance of bronze statues at the last moments, and let me know the nobility of people in this era of materialism and lies, and I wrote these gains into this reportage. This kind of harvest cannot be measured by money, and there is indeed something more valuable and permanent in the world than money, which is human will, character and responsibility.

After a few days of relaxation, I was like a climber climbing a steep slope only to find myself facing an even steeper mountain – and that was writing.

188 people told me the same thing, if it was brief, fire, water guns, positions. There are no bizarre plots, no twists and turns in love, no sex, no violence and insider stories, there is the threat of death, but death ultimately goes to the fire demon. As a book, it doesn't get much harder than that to write, and that's when I realized that my interview saved me. Meticulous and objective interviews are like a river that flows from afar to my eyes. I said that I'm not writing, I'm trying to get back to the truth, and it's a very difficult process. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism winners can interview for a subject for two years or even change careers in order to get first-hand real material. My interview notes tell me about each person's position, everything he did, his mental activity, his suffering and his dedication. That's enough, you don't need to be elevated, the real is the most powerful. I couldn't type, and when I handed the handwritten manuscript to the copyist typist, page by page, I noticed that she had cried. These words were circulated among the young people of the photocopying agency, who were moved by the firefighters and expected me to write something new. In those days, I wrote, typist Wang Jing typed, and only the two of us experienced every story of the July 16 fire. Wang Jing took my manuscript, her expression was close to sacred, she knew that these words contained a new test of life and death, a new Jedi fight. Later, Zhao Qiong, the manager of the copy agency, said: "Teacher Yuan, don't write it, your expression is too painful, and we are all uncomfortable." ”

Suffering? Yes, it will certainly be difficult to build a monument on paper that contains blood and tears, but I will not suffer more than the warriors of July 16. After months of interviewing and writing, my body collapsed significantly, and I couldn't run. I went to the doctor who used to be the doctor of the national sports team for a massage, and he said that you are covered with tendons, and the liver meridian is especially bad, and you must have experienced great emotional twists and turns. Yes, my emotions were caught up in the stormy waters of July 16. During that time, I couldn't hear the word "fire". On July 16, 2011, the first anniversary of the July 16 fire, PetroChina in Dalian caught fire again. When I saw the news on TV, I couldn't help but cry out loud, and the things I had accumulated in my heart always exploded. I cried in the bathroom for half an hour, feeling a little more relaxed. I told myself that I had to write it out, and I had to finish it.

I often miss my interviewees and want to see them and talk to them, but I haven't finished writing and can't face them. Li Yongfeng is the captain of the Dalian Development Zone Public Security Fire Brigade. His wife told me that when Brigade Li came back from the fire, he was out of shape, and his daughter couldn't recognize her father, so she cried and threw herself into her father's arms. The wife said, Yongfeng, how much of a sin have you suffered to become like this? Li Yongfeng said: "I'm fine, my brothers are fine, just come back alive." "Li Yongfeng and his wife agreed on three chapters: don't mention 7.16. However, in those days, Li Yongfeng would suddenly stand up at home and say, "I took 72 brothers in, and I brought 72 brothers out alive." Then he sat down and pondered. Then he stood up again and said the same thing.

Many officers and men who experienced the 16 July fire could not sleep at night and often woke up in alarm. They don't talk about this fire, they shy away from the memory of this fire. When I was interviewed, many people would suddenly pause, be silent, and their eyeballs would become bloodshot. The silence was terrible, they didn't cry, but my tears wet the interview.

4

I can't accept lies, empty words and clichés, I think style is character. The words that a writer leaves to the world should be pure and simple. Either don't write, or be honest. Don't add nonsense to an otherwise chaotic world.

In this book, I write down the news facts that I have interviewed, and I write stories. I strive for authenticity and simplicity as a way to pay tribute to the 7.16 warriors. This book records the combat process of the officers and men of the public security fire brigades and corps of 14 cities in Liaoning Province who successfully put out the July 16 fire, focusing on the achievements of soldiers and grassroots cadres. I was looking forward to finishing my writing, but at the end of it was infinitely melancholy, I felt that I had to say goodbye to them, I couldn't bear them, I could never forget them.

Their experience is one of the most noteworthy memories in China in the past century, and I am glad to have known them and written about them. They are not only heroes, but also great figures worthy of praise for the Chinese nation. My understanding of great men is tenacity, salvation and responsibility, and just like them, a group of ordinary soldiers shine with eternal brilliance in a few days and nights.