National Mission

After the liberation of Lanzhou in August 1949, according to central arrangements, the Northwest People's Liberation Army's "Heroic First Division" was transferred en masse to civilian work, marched to the Gobi Desert of the Hexi Corridor in Gansu, and set up camp, joining builders from all over the country to begin constructing New China's first nonferrous metal industrial base. The novel follows division commander Li Peiqi, chief engineer Wang Xiaowei, and Chen Yilian, deputy director of the workers' hospital: as young people they joined the revolution while studying in Beiping, and after the founding of New China they went together to the front lines of industrial construction. With his outstanding ideological work and organizational talent, Li Peiqi helps the entire division complete the transition from battlefield to construction site; Wang Xiaowei pours his loyalty into technical research, holds his ground on key issues such as the survey of the Xiaolongshan nickel mine, and negotiates repeatedly with Soviet experts. Factories from the Northeast and Shanghai were relocated west wholesale; tens of thousands of builders lived in rammed-earth huts, drank bitter salty water, fought sandstorms, battled wolves, searched for mineral deposits, and diverted water sources, ultimately proving up a major copper-nickel deposit, carrying out a massive blast of nearly ten thousand tons of explosives, and building a nonferrous metal industrial city in the Gobi Desert, shedding the country's labels of "poor ore" and "nickel shortage." The work also depicts the emotional entanglements among Li Peiqi, Wang Xiaowei, and Chen Yilian, weaving personal fate into the national cause. Author Chen Yufu conducted interviews in Tongcheng Baiyin, the nickel capital Jinchuan, and other places, and based the novel on real historical sources; critics regard it as a heroic history of the pioneers of China's western development.