Wei Deyou watches the border area in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

Every morning Wei Deyou lets his hungry sheep out of their pen on the grasslands of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, but the 81-year-old is no ordinary herdsman — he has been guarding the Chinese border for 57 years.

Just eight kilometers to the west of Wei’s house stands China’s No 173 boundary marker with Kazakhstan.

He grazes his sheep on the Sarbulak grassland near the barbed wire that separates the two countries. Wei calls it his routine patrol.

His house does not have a number, because Wei and his wife are the only people who still permanently reside in the 50-square-kilometer border area.

Wei walks along the border for more than 10 kilometers each day — he reckons the distance he has covered over the decades would equal circling the earth five times.

Since he first arrived, he has dissuaded more than 1,000 people from illegally crossing the border between China and Kazakhstan, and has helped send back many thousands of animals that strayed across.

“I am just an ordinary person who didn’t really do anything big. Only by doing this can I find my heart at ease,” Wei said.

The herdsman-cum-border guard has long been familiar to frontier soldiers and police officers who benefit from the information he constantly provides.

He used to personally visit them on horseback to file his reports, but a mobile phone now saves him such trips.

Although the border defense force has installed surveillance cameras in the area, they still value Wei’s intelligence because he knows every inch of grass at his feet and every hilltop within sight.

Wei came to Sarbulak in 1964, answering the government’s call on retired servicemen to join the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and guard the country’s frontier while farming and herding. 

A unique State-owned economic and paramilitary organization, the corps is mostly composed of former soldiers. After it was deployed in the region in the 1950s, many retired service personnel came on board and began to participate in local economic development.

Wei served four years in the Chinese army before leaving the force. As a veteran who wanted to keep contributing, he promised he would go wherever the corps needed help. 

After arriving in Xinjiang, Wei became a herdsman and was also responsible for border patrols. Thirty more veterans were also dispatched to Sarbulak with him.

Every day, they traveled the 500,000 sq km area with their herds, mostly sheep, searching for any suspicious movement along the border.

“You have to really keep an eye on the animals. Herdsmen from the other country would cross the border in search of better grass, unaware this could easily trigger tension on both sides,” Wei said.

The daily patrol usually ended before nightfall. For outsiders, the grassland has stunning views in the summer, but whether on or off duty, the patrolmen suffered countless mosquito bites brought by the warmer temperatures in summer. And during winters, they had to dig themselves out of a meter or more of snow brought by blizzards from Siberia.

In 1967, Liu Jinghao, a woman from Eastern China’s Shandong province, traveled thousands of kilometers to fulfill an engagement in the Xinjiang region in the country’s far west. She was on her way to marry the then 27-year-old veteran, Wei.

The groom-to-be had grown up in the same village as Liu, and neighbors introduced them to each other.

As Liu arrived in Xinjiang, she felt a sense of regret. Reluctantly, she was forced to take a donkey wagon to cross the desolate, roadless wilderness that lay between her and her fiance, who was living in Sarbulak, an area west of Urumqi, near the border with Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. She was shocked by what she saw on arrival.

The wedding room Wei had prepared for his future wife was a shelter dug underground, and as Liu looked around, she saw that they were alone.

The nearest human was a fellow veteran stationed a few dozen kilometers away.

Wei has spent five decades as a solitary patroller of the no-man’s-land along the border between China and Kazakhstan. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

As summer got underway, sandstorms and gadfly infestations proved too much. Liu packed up her stuff and left one afternoon.

It took Wei 40 minutes to catch up to his wife. “Where are you going?” he shouted as he approached. “There are wolves around here.” Liu stopped. Eventually, Wei was able to persuade her to turn back and the couple went home together.

Although he had promised his wife that they would leave after a few years, the couple remained in Sarbulak for the next five decades, raising four children — three daughters and one son — and helping Wei fulfill the promise he had made the first time he went to Xinjiang.

“Now we aren’t going anywhere. We will spend our whole lives here,” Liu said.

More than fifty years after first moving to their section of the border region, Wei and Liu are the only ones left.

In 1982, when some local servicemen were discharged from duty, the community of over 100 households began to dissolve. Many families gradually left to rejoin the wider world.

Wei also had the chance to leave, but he decided to stay. The veteran said he had gotten used to life in Sarbulak, and besides, with the frontier guards he had served alongside, some of whom had even helped him build a decent house for his family, he felt an attachment to the land.

The birth of their children comforted Liu, who finally began to settle in their lonely house on the frontier. 

From then on, the family was only left with vast open spaces and their most valuable possession: a flock of about 100 sheep. 

Many have repeatedly asked Wei: “How could you persist in this no-man’s-land for so long? Didn’t you ever think of leaving like others?”

For Wei, the promise he had made still counted and he continued to patrol the border voluntarily. “I believe it is my responsibility to watch the land and I made a promise when I first came here. I am just a stubborn man,” he said.

In 2016, there were about 70 herdsmen like Wei who had volunteered to watch the borders in Sarbulak.

As the biggest region in China, Xinjiang contains about 25 percent of the country’s land borders. Local herdsmen and farmers living near the border have become a major force in protecting it.

According to Xinjiang border defense force, more than 80 percent of irregularities in the border areas are first reported by locals, who they nickname the “eagle eyes”.

To keep an eye on anything suspicious, Wei always carries a pair of binoculars, as well as an old radio for entertainment and a rusty military kettle to keep him hydrated.

The binoculars that he wears are more than 30 years old and were a gift from a soldier back in the 1980s. The radio is his 50th, the others having broken because of the harsh environment.

In July 2016, Wei was watching his sheep grazing on a hill when three white vans came dashing toward the border. He instantly called the border control office, which later confirmed that they were photographers chasing birds.

During 50 years on patrol, Wei traveled more than 200,000 km, and the border area he was responsible for remained safe without any incidents. Wei once said that it was the happiest thing for him.

In the eyes of his children, Wei became a real nomad, one who resisted the call of urban society. They remember that their father rarely went into town.

Wei and his wife retired in 2002, but again, they decided to stay. Later, their children bought an apartment in the nearest town in the hopes that their parents would enjoy a better life there. Still, Wei refused and returned to where he felt he belonged.

But what also makes Wei happy now is that he has a successor to his patrolling career. 

In 2017, his second daughter, Wei Ping, returned to settle in the grassland and joined her father’s mission.

“From now on, I’ll continue patrolling and persist until the end. If I really can’t walk anymore, or die, my girl will continue,” Wei Deyou told Xinhua.

“I hope she safeguards the border well; not just considering personal gains and losses, but passing down the Communist spirit and making contributions to the Party and the people.”

In the same year, his perseverance and tales of life on the frontier were the inspiration for a movie. Afterward, Wei Deyou received several commendations for long and dutiful service.

In over 50 years, he only saw his mother once. When his parents died, he was unable to attend both the funerals as the road out of Sarbulak was buried in thick snow both times. This has been Wei’s greatest regret.

This year, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the CPC Central Committee chose to recognize the contributions of 29 outstanding Party members, with the new July 1 Medal. Wei was among those selected.

Though he no longer herds sheep, he still walks to the border every day, to make sure that everything is alright. 

“The Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chairman Mao called on us to go to Xinjiang to defend and build the frontier, so we signed up and came here,” he told Xinhua. “Since I came, I must follow the Party’s command. I’ll stay on the border for the rest of my life.”

Wei was a soldier once, and still thinks of himself as one. “When there is faith in your heart, there is power in your feet,” the veteran said.