This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. To remember history, honour martyrs, cherish peace and forge ahead toward the future, under the guidance of the China Prefectural-level Newspaper Research Association, Zhenjiang Newspaper Media Group has sponsored a journalism initiative titled“Trace the Footprints of the War of Resistance, Inherit Strength for Rejuvenation”, jointly launched by Ordos Convergence Media Center and prefectural-level media outlets nationwide. The national field-visit phase of this initiative is now well underway. Covering 23 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government across roughly 80 cities, the research team travelled to Ordos, Inner Mongolia, to unlock red memories of the War of Resistance hidden deep in the grasslands.
In midsummer, golden sunlight spills over the Otog Grassland, where pasture grass rolls like green billows and the scent of artemisia and fresh grass drifts on the breeze. Perched on a hill ridge in Mukainaoer Town stands the Exhibition Hall of the Taolimin Anti-Japanese Base Area. At its square rises the sculpture Three Oxen Pulling an Automobile, keeping watch over the vast grassland. The rusted metal body bears the marks of time, while three plough oxen, backs arched as they strain forward, freeze in sculpture a gripping grassland resistance legend from more than 80 years ago.
Late one night in 1937, Han Shijin, Chief of Staff of the Taolimin Self-Defence Corps, led his fighters in a surprise night raid on an enemy camp. They routed the defenders and seized a Japanese military truck. Local villagers then used three plough oxen to haul the truck back to the base area — a widely-told heroic tale of local resistance. Lying at the junction of three banners, Taolimin formed a vital passage for Japanese troops advancing toward the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. In 1938, puppet Japanese forces launched a large-scale invasion. Here, Communists held high the banner of the Anti-Japanese National United Front, united diverse forces and fought bloody defensive battles, building a solid barrier on the grasslands to defend the border region.
Beside the exhibition hall lies Taolimin Primary School, its blue-brick teaching buildings half-hidden among white poplars. Founded in 1933, the school served as a secret work outpost for the Sui-Meng Working Committee of the Communist Party of China during wartime. More than half a century apart, two letters link generations of patriotic devotion. In the 1950s, young pioneers wrote to Comrades Mao Zedong and Zhu De and received kind encouragement from Zhongnanhai. In 2018, a new generation of youngsters penned letters expressing their resolve to carry forward the red legacy, and also received heart-warming replies.
Today, young campus red-story narrators in school uniforms recount wartime episodes to visiting guests with youthful yet resolute voices. Pastoral melodies drift across the grasslands, and wind-power turbines turn slowly. The smoke of war has long cleared, yet the red spark of resistance never fades. Passed from revolutionary forebears to grassland teenagers, red memories endure and reverberate across the land of Ordos, lighting the path forward.
（记者：王曾、白倩）
