It came on the afternoon of May 13 for the Chinese naval vessel designated "Xiangfan" to sail beyond China's territorial seas after a 50-hour uninterrupted voyage on its way to Singapore for the purpose of participating in the multilateral maritime exercise of the Second Western Pacific Navy Forum. When the time of bidding farewell to its motherland was at hand, the interim Party committee of the vessel lined up the entire crew for a solemn oath-taking ceremony to this end.

　　At 17:30, all the officers and men were in neat arrays on the flight deck with high spirits. In the midst of resonant singing of the National Anthem, they raised their right hands and solemnly took the oath in front of the bright Five-Star Red Flag: Be loyal to the Party, the motherland and the people; obey orders and command; and observe disciplines…

　　Ever since it sailed off from Sanya on May 11, all the officers and men who were on their way to join the exercise have been in high morale all along. To be sure of leaving nothing to chance, they turned the voyage into a trip of training and conducted various deployment exercises and carried out earnest debugging and test on the main battery system in accordance with the characteristics of the exercise. In a nutshell, the officers and men are making good their solemn vow which they took as the soldiers of the PRC by observing the top notch benchmarks.

　　Holding oath-taking ceremony of bidding farewell to the motherland on the way of foreign visits or carrying out long voyage missions is a special form of patriotic education practiced by the Navy. According to Senior Captain Li Xiaoyan, commander in charge of two previous foreign visits, which took him to Malaysia, South Africa, Germany, Britain and more countries, he would have a sense of proud boiling in his mind every time when he participated in the farewell ceremony in front of the National Flag.

　　By Lu Desheng and Li Gencheng

　　(May 14, PLA Daily)