The Angry Bullet

The Angry Bullet is a first-person novel by the web author Zhou Jianliang (pen name "Wandering Saber"), published by Shaanxi Normal University Press in 2006 and regarded as one of the early landmark works of Chinese online military fiction. The book is narrated by "I," a young man nicknamed "Baldy": originally a bar singer and street hustler in a central Chinese city, aimless in life, he is drafted and moves from the central city to the Xinjiang borderlands, joining a special forces unit. The change of environment and harsh training—drill, live-fire shooting, tactical movement—reshape this once timid, arrogant and self-doubting young man; in days of training to the death, his comrades awaken in him a sense of honor he has never known, and he gradually understands responsibility, commitment, and the weight of the words "defend the homeland." Through three threads of family, love and brotherhood in arms, the novel writes of comrades killed or wounded, such as the ever-smiling Luohan and the honest Maizi, and of Baldy, always hating evil, who after a comrade's murder violates discipline to hunt the killer alone and ends up in confinement. The language is rough and hard-edged, the emotion intense; in place of grand battlefield narrative it uses masses of training and daily-life detail to portray the ferocity, loyalty and tenderness of a group of Chinese soldiers.