Every time Zhou Chunlei went home on leave, he had to explain to people that he worked in Ali, not Alibaba.
Ali had no livestream influencers selling goods, nor did it run Double Eleven promotions. It was simply a desolate plateau spanning 300,000 square kilometers.
Ali was a forbidden zone of life. Not to mention delicate livestream influencers—even a burly, strong soldier like himself had to struggle with every ounce of strength just to survive in that uninhabited land.
As time passed and he explained it more and more often, Zhou Chunlei gradually grew sick of it.
With his simple, honest way of thinking, he began to wonder whether the internet industry had taken up too many social resources.
In the village where Zhou Chunlei came from, old men so frail they could barely walk would sit in the corners of walls basking in the sun and chat about Jack Ma and Pony Ma, laughing about the former richest man's small goal of earning a hundred million.
Yet Zhang Chunlei had to explain the difference between Ali and Alibaba over and over again, even though that difference spanned a full 300,000 square kilometers—a difference that had to be defended through war after war.
In 2018, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse.
When enlightened people across the country finally realized that immense danger was approaching, that manufacturing was ultimately what we could truly rely on, and that science and education were what had to be developed at all costs, the internet industry still drew everyone's attention.
When enlightened people across the country finally understood that, once a great army pressed upon our borders, the only people we could rely on were those most lovable ones, and that we had to take good care of those who had previously retired from service and not let their hearts grow cold, the snake-faced influencers and celebrities still drew everyone's attention.
Zhang Chunlei actually loved online shopping and enjoyed scrolling through Douyin too, but deep down, he always vaguely felt that something might be wrong with society's allocation of resources.
Had everyone paid a little too much attention to the internet industry, celebrities, and influencers?
"It's not that I don't understand—it's just that the world changes too fast..."
Zhang Chunlei muttered as he picked up the cargo from the airport and drove the army-green truck toward the camp of the military equipment testing facility.
As a soldier who drove trucks, Zhang Chunlei did not actually want to remain at the equipment testing facility. He had lofty ambitions. He wanted to go to Pangong Lake, to the front line. He felt that was where a real man belonged.
Those who had never been to the plateau would never understand what it felt like to breathe air with only forty percent of the oxygen found inland, to have their faces and hands sunburned until their skin peeled, to feel their lungs tearing with every breath, and to open their eyes each morning needing to celebrate that they were still alive.
The word hardship was nowhere near enough to describe the cruelty of the plateau.
Every spring and summer, it took roughly three days for trucks to deliver supplies to Pangong Lake.
But once winter came and heavy snow sealed off the mountains, trucks had to follow National Highway 219, cross three mountains more than 5,000 meters above sea level, and pass over frozen roads and snowbound mountain hollows before they could painfully reach the Pangong Lake front line.
As for how long the journey took, it could be as short as a week or as long as a lifetime.
Put simply, if you delivered supplies to Pangong Lake in winter and came back alive, you could be awarded a second-class merit citation!
That was the plateau frontier. Its hardships and brutality were beyond anything ordinary people could imagine.
Zhang Chunlei was lucky. He had never gone to Pangong Lake in winter, but he still feared winter.
That was because winter on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was different from winter inland. The cold wind seemed able to pierce through every layer of equipment and stab straight into people's bones.
The plateau lacked oxygen, and red blood cell counts dropped, leaving even the strongest men without the energy to fight nature. Even a minor cold had a nineteen to forty percent chance of causing fatal cerebral edema.
This was a forbidden zone of life. That was no empty phrase.
Not long afterward, the truck drove into a level courtyard. A five-star red flag hung in the center, with rows of single-story buildings surrounding it.
Behind the courtyard lay a shooting range that stretched as far as the eye could see. New ammunition and weapons were often tested there, and it was also Zhang Chunlei's favorite place.
Zhang Chunlei was not highly educated and could not make sense of the complicated instruments in the laboratories. He felt weapons testing was far more exciting. Many of those weapons were even one-of-a-kind discontinued pieces; after testing, they had never been issued to the troops for various reasons and had vanished without a trace.
Even military experts had never seen some of those weapons, yet Zhang Chunlei had not only seen them, but touched them with his own hands. That experience filled him with pride.
After they carried the cargo into the warehouse, the cook happily made tomato-and-egg soup, dry-fried green beans, and braised eggplant.
Everyone ate happily. In a place like this, fresh vegetables were far more precious than meat. When there were no fresh vegetables, they could only chew on canned vegetables or boil soup with freeze-dried ones.
"Come on, come on! One set each. Put them on. These are new products, high-tech stuff, invented by us. Foreigners couldn't buy them even if they had money!"
Song Xiangyang said exaggeratedly as he handed everyone a set of new clothes. They were athletic in style and had come from the several large crates Zhang Chunlei had just hauled back from the airport.
"Tracksuits? Isn't that a bit inappropriate?"
"What's inappropriate about it? Orders from above: test the cold resistance of these new clothes on the plateau as soon as possible. So this is our mission, understand?"
"Understood! We guarantee completion of the mission!"
Everyone horsed around. As a logistics unit, the equipment testing facility was nowhere near as serious as a frontline force.
When they first received them, no one took the clothes seriously: fleece-lined shirts, athletic-style padded jackets barely thicker than ordinary jackets, thin knitted hats, and slim-fit tapered sweatpants.
They had all spent time on the plateau. How could this stuff possibly withstand the biting wind?
What a joke!
The underwear, on the other hand, was genuinely good—snug and dry against the skin, much more comfortable than the army-issued oversized drawers.
Yet before long, everyone's faces had turned rosy. Aside from the lack of oxygen, it was mainly because they were hot.
"What's going on? Did the kitchen put something extra in the food? Why do I feel a little hot?"
"I feel a little hot too. It feels like I'm wearing the thickest winter gear. Don't tell me, this thin thing is actually pretty good at keeping out the cold."
"Could these clothes really be high-tech, like that kid Song Xiangyang said?"
"I just went outside wearing only one shirt. My neck and chin were freezing, but the parts covered by the shirt didn't feel cold at all. Isn't that amazing?"
"This is incredible! What high-tech clothing? This is black tech, isn't it!?"
Night fell, and a sudden cold wind rose, howling past like the roar of a pack of beasts. The atmosphere at the equipment testing facility reached a fever pitch.
It was not even the coldest season of the year yet, but a single shirt had held off the plateau's nighttime wind. How was that possible!?
They did not even need fleece-lined pants on their lower bodies. A single pair of windproof athletic pants was completely enough. How was that possible!?
"With this set of black tech, we won't have to wrap ourselves up like rice dumplings anymore, right? Feel how light this fabric is. You can barely feel it on your body!"
"Our side is actually not too bad. But if this set were delivered to the Pangong Lake front line..."
"Hehe, with such badass lightweight gear, they won't have to wrap themselves in those forty-plus-pound sheepskin coats anymore. The guys at the front might even dare to raid the enemy camp at night!"
Everyone discussed it animatedly. They had already realized the enormous military value of X2 thermal fiber. After all, modern warfare was often a battle of logistics.
On this point, everyone's assessment was unprecedentedly unanimous.
Badass!
Fucking badass!
Many years ago, I went to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau once. After I came back, I decided to live well.
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