Wang Jicai: thirty-two years guarding an island the size of two football fields

Out in the Yellow Sea, off the mouth of the Guanhe River near Lianyungang in Jiangsu, there is an island called Kaishan. Its area is 0.013 square kilometers — not much bigger than two football fields. No fresh water. No electricity. No residents. Only bare rock and wind coming across the water without anything to stop it.

In 1986 a twenty-six-year-old militiaman named Wang Jicai was ordered to garrison the place. Before him, the keepers sent out had lasted thirteen days at the longest. The posting was that hard. His wife, Wang Shihua, would not leave him to it. She resigned from her job teaching primary school and went out to the island with him. What she said became famous later: "You guard the island, I guard you."

Life there was worse than they had pictured. Their home was a hut made of a few bed boards pushed together. They drank rainwater they caught. They ate pickles and compressed biscuits. When a typhoon came, the supply boat could not reach the jetty, and the two of them walked the patrol route on empty stomachs anyway. Everything was damp; a quilt could be wrung out like a towel. At night the only light was a kerosene lamp.

The hardest thing was not the hardship. It was the solitude. For years the only people on the island were the two of them, talking to the island, talking to the sea, talking to each other.

And they took one small act and made it a ritual that lasted thirty-two years. Every morning at first light, the two of them raised the national flag. They bought the flags with their own money. The salt air rotted the cloth fast. Every flag they took down was folded and kept. "The island is home," Wang said, "and home is the country. Guarding the island is guarding the country. While that flag is standing here, this ground is China's."

There are more than two hundred steps on the island. They went up and down them every day for thirty-two years.

Their son was born on the night of a typhoon. The supply boat could not come in. There was no one to deliver the baby, so Wang did it himself, following instructions from a radio broadcast, and brought his son into the world with his own hands. He named the boy Zhiguo — aspire to the country. The child's childhood had no toys and no playmates. His playmates were seabirds and rocks. His toy was his father's army canteen.

Thirty-two years, more than ten thousand days and nights. Typhoons tore the roof off. Smugglers tried threats and then tried money. Illegal harvesters wanted them to look the other way. They kept the lamp, the flag and the patrol route, and they gave ground on none of it.

One couple, one bare island, thirty-two years — and the two words "home" and "country" turned into the ordinary business of every single day.

In July 2018 Wang Jicai fell ill while on duty and collapsed on the steps he had climbed for half his life. He was fifty-eight. He was posthumously named a Model of the Times. At the funeral people realized how few honors he had collected and how long the story was. He had not been unwilling to come down. The organization had once considered replacing him, and he waved the idea away. "I'm used to it here. Anyone new would have to start from the beginning. Somebody has to watch this island."

After he died his wife filed an application and took over his post, becoming the head of the militia observation point on Kaishan. Every morning she still raises the flag at the same hour. "Old Wang is out there," she says. "I'm keeping watch for him."

Kaishan has electricity now, and desalinated water, and a steady stream of visitors who come to pay their respects. The flag still goes up every morning and snaps in the wind off the Yellow Sea. It is one ordinary man's promise to his country, kept for thirty-two years, and still being kept.