Guard of honor saluting with guns.
Photo by Li Zhijun

　　"Your soldiers have received very good training and are the powerful guarantee of the state," said general Del Rio, chief of staff of the Brazil Army, after watching the performance of the Beijing Garrison's open regiment stationing at the foot of Yanshan Mountain.

　　On December 31, 1974, Premier Zhou wrote an instruction in person to open a Red Army regiment which once fought up and down the country and rendered meritorious service under the command of the old generation revolutionaries such as Fang Zhimin, Chen Yi and Su Yu.

　　On a day in 2003, the Defense Minister of a certain country came to visit the regiment. Cai Chao, a solider of the 4th Regiment, jumped into the trench to make observation and shooting. That was a tactical action for a single solider under simulated battlefield conditions. As soon as the five half-figure targets and shoulder targets sprang up from the ground, they were hit one after another. Foreign guests watching the performance at the visitor's stand were stunned by the performance and opened their eyes widely because it only took the soldier 15 seconds to hit the five targets.

　　Wen Jianguo, a gunner of the 82 mm recoilless gun, has accumulatively fired 2638 rounds with a score of all hit, and he even set the record of firing three shells at a fixed target through the same hole.

　　The scouts can be easily identified anywhere in the barracks of the said regiment because the elbows and knees of their shirts and pants have been patched up repeatedly and the callus of their hands are thick. They owed all these to their days, months and years of hard training. The pay-off? Every one of them has mastered a number of consummate skills.

　　In the summer of 2004, they gave a performance to chief of general staff of a certain country, who left the following comments in the visitors' book after watching it: "I have seen two Chinese Great Walls here: one is the ancient 10000 li Great Wall and the other is the great wall of iron and steel formed by your armed forces for the purpose of defending your country.

　　Over the past 30 years of being entrusted with the task of receiving foreign visitors, the regiment has given 940-odd military performances to heads of state, political heavyweights and senior generals from 132 countries and regions, and won 3,800-odd medals and memorial plaques. The officers and men are adding more and more brilliant exploits to the heroic regiment with their deeds.

　　By Li Zhijun, Si Jing and Zhang Xiaoqi

　　(July 25, PLA Daily)