Equipment may be upgraded, formations restructured, tactics innovated, and the battlefield extended into new domains — yet the root and soul of the people's army remain unchanged. On the 99th anniversary of the founding of the army in 2026, Where the Banner Points, the first episode of the six-part media series Winning (制胜), opens the whole work on the political and spiritual plane. Shen Yi parses it into four keywords: inheritance, courage, loyalty, and mission. Four sets of stories answer "why we fight"; the increment posted on Army Day itself supplies "where we fight" — the direction is written explicitly into the imagery of the narrative structure.
Inheritance: A Roll Call That Echoes Ninety Years
At the daily roll call of the Dadu River Company — a company of an army brigade of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Ground Force — the names of the Seventeen Warriors of the Dadu River are called out one by one. In 1935, during the Long March, those seventeen warriors forced a crossing of the Dadu River, opening an advance route in the face of dense enemy fire and raging water. Today the company's soldiers still answer, on the martyrs' behalf, that solemn word: "Present."
That single word — "present" — reaches far beyond an ordinary roll call. It joins history to the present: ahead are the revolutionary forerunners who charged toward the far bank through a hail of bullets; behind stand the new generation of officers and soldiers who will continue to carry out the mission into the future.
What is inherited is not weapons or tactics. Wooden boats cannot carry the combat tasks of modern conditions, and the experience of the past cannot be transplanted intact to informatized and intelligentized warfare; what is truly passed down is the faith, the convictions, the spirit, and the work style that the forerunners forged in the trial of life and death. The more complex war becomes, and the larger the system grows, the more the soldiers at every fighting position need a stable anchor of value — so that, at the most dangerous, most exhausting, most chaotic moments, they still know clearly why they fight. That inner order is itself a component of combat power.
A tradition of honor is converted into combat power only when it enters the fighting position. Inside new armored equipment, the hearts of the Seventeen Warriors still beat; within new operational systems, the lifeblood of the Long March spirit still flows.
Courage: Thirteen Minutes and Fractions of a Second
The story of naval test pilot Yang Yong holds two scales of time. During one test flight at an altitude of ten thousand meters, the cockpit lost pressure; Yang held on for thirteen minutes and preserved every scrap of experimental data. Later, tasked with the test-flight program for the KJ-600 carrier-borne early-warning aircraft, he and his comrades — with little mature experience to draw on — worked repeatedly to compress the interval between catapult launch and gear-up retraction to fractions of a second, steadily overcoming the problems of catapult takeoff and carrier-landing trials at sea.
Those thirteen minutes tested will under extreme peril; those fractions of a second embody modern military engineering's pursuit of precision. For one person to stay calm before danger takes courage; for a team to polish a maneuver again and again inside a window of fractions of a second takes professional discipline and scientific spirit. Joined together, they form the complete and mature courage of the soldier of the new era: unflustered before peril, daring to try before the unknown, rigorous before the limit, and placing mission above personal safety when the country has need.
Test pilots face a boundary of technology and also a boundary of life and death. Every takeoff answers "can it be done?"; every set of data may determine how equipment is improved; every safe landing widens the road for those who come after. Yang Yong and his peers turn peril into data, data into standards, standards into capability, and then hand that capability to ever more officers and soldiers.
Loyalty: A Single Scratch
Cui Daohu, an engineering soldier of the PLA Rocket Force, spent thirty years moving between the Gobi, the deep mountains, and the major work zones, leading his men to conquer the problems of high-precision construction and to build underground positions for strategic weapons. He rarely speaks of his own achievements and is content to remain unnamed.
In his work, loyalty takes the form of an almost severe sense of standards: not even a tiny scratch may be let pass lightly. In strategic engineering, a small problem never stays small — equipment may be sealed in storage for long stretches, or unsealed in haste under emergency conditions; positions may face high heat, high humidity, vibration, and complex electromagnetic environments. Any defect in material, any deviation in installation, any lapse in workmanship could, at the most critical moment, translate into systemic risk.
To guard a scratch is to guard the standard of the engineering; to guard the standard of the engineering is to guard the reliability of strategic capability; to guard that reliability is to guard the bottom line of national security. True loyalty most often shows itself where no one is watching: to execute an order resolutely is loyalty; to hold fast when there is no applause is loyalty; and when personal interest conflicts with the country's need, to put the country's need first is loyalty as well.
Decades rooted in the deep mountains mean that many achievements can never be made public and many sacrifices go unknown. He and his comrades still choose to stand fast, because they know their work bears on the nation's strategic security — and on the cost that any external power must calculate in earnest before it makes an adventurist decision.
Mission: The Alarm at Half Past Eleven at Night
A certain brigade of the PLA Air Force's aviation arm is stationed year-round on the front line. Late one night, foreign aircraft, under the cover of a drill, closed in to probe in multiple waves and as a coordinated system. The combat alarm sounded; pilot Ding Xiaochuan and his comrades scrambled their jets, worked in concert to meet the situation, and drove the targets away. The program did not disclose the specific airspace, the nationality of the foreign aircraft, the type, or the distance — and where authoritative information has not released a detail, there is no need to guess.
What truly deserves attention is the high state of vigilance, the professional handling, and the sense of mission that front-line soldiers displayed when facing a complex security environment. Such close-in probing by foreign aircraft carries the hallmarks of complex gray-zone operations: respond too weakly and it may be misread as weakness; act too far and the risk of friction expands. Front-line soldiers must complete identification, judgment, reporting, coordination, and handling within an extremely short span — resolutely defending national sovereignty and security while also showing the highest degree of professionalism and rationality.
"When the motherland needs us, we step forward; when a powerful enemy closes in, we step forward; when ten thousand homes are lit, we stand guard." These words tie the soldier's fighting position directly to the life of the people. Often, the best outcome of national-security work is that life simply goes on as usual: the alarm never reaches the city, the danger never enters the home. Behind that calm lie the watches, the patrols, the training, and the steadfastness of countless officers and soldiers.
Four Stories, One Logic
Linking the four stories together, a clear logic comes into view: the Dadu River Company shows inheritance; Yang Yong shows courage; Cui Daohu shows loyalty; Ding Xiaochuan shows mission. The four keywords interpenetrate — within inheritance there is loyalty, within courage there is mission, within mission there is faith, and within loyalty there is also the courage to face risk and challenge.
The modernization of the people's army is the unity of advanced equipment and revolutionary spirit: the red gene gives direction to technical power, while modern science in turn gives the heroic spirit a more forceful vehicle in reality. It is this unity that enables generation after generation of officers and soldiers to stand at new fighting positions and answer the same historical question: when the Party and the people have need, can you step up, can you win, can you be relied upon?
The Test of 99 Years
This trust comes from history: the Nanchang Uprising, the struggle in the Jinggang Mountains, the Long March of twenty-five thousand li, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the War of Liberation, and the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea — countless revolutionary forerunners proved their loyalty to the Party and the people with blood and life. This trust comes from reality: on the borderlands and the sea frontier, in the far seas and the open ocean, in the aerospace domain, in the Gobi and the deep mountains, and at the front lines of disaster relief and peacekeeping, the revolutionary soldiers of the new era put the people's army's original aspiration and mission into practice through concrete action. And this trust points toward the future: on the new journey toward building a strong country and national rejuvenation, the people's army will surely take up missions yet more glorious and more arduous.
However the form of war may change, and however the security environment may evolve, this army always follows the command of the Party, always stands on the side of the people, and always fights for the motherland and the people.
Answering "Present"
In 1935, the Seventeen Warriors answered: "Present!" In the era of revolutionary war, countless martyrs answered: "Present!" Since the founding of New China, the officers and soldiers who have guarded the borders, defended the motherland, and served the people have answered: "Present!" Today — in the cockpit of a carrier-borne aircraft, in underground works, at forward airfields, and on cross-sea training grounds — the revolutionary soldiers of the new era still answer: "Present!"
The faith, loyalty, courage, and responsibility carried by that word — "present" — have never changed. One generation hands the war banner to the next, and with it hands over faith, conviction, the heroic spirit, and the will to win. Where the banner points, there faith resides; where the banner points, there mission returns; where the banner points is the direction of victory.
Where the Banner Points — The Directional Signal on the 99th Army Day
On Army Day itself, August 1, Shen Yi offered a further, converging reading of Where the Banner Points on Weibo. Reposting a video related to the episode, he made the point explicit: equipment may be upgraded, formations restructured, tactics innovated, and the battlefield extended into new domains — yet the root and soul of the people's army remain unchanged. In the end, Where the Banner Points gathers all its stories, scenes, and details into one solemn judgment: the Chinese People's Liberation Army is always a heroic force on which the Party and the people can place their complete trust.
What genuinely merits attention is his reading of direction. Where the Banner Points begins with the "banner" — a banner represents direction, and it also carries history. Where the Party flag points is the direction in which the people's army advances; where the war banner points is where officers and soldiers fulfill their mission and strive for victory. He noted in particular that most of the scenes in Winning point toward that "future battlefield one longs for even in dreams" — on the other side of the strait — and that "storming the beach" runs through the series from the very first episode: "This gives a clear objective and an explicit direction. The war banner points there, and the heroic people's army will, accordingly, win new victories there."
Set this statement back into the framework of the four stories above — inheritance, courage, loyalty, mission — and the logic closes: the four keywords answer "why we fight," while the Army Day commentary supplies "where we fight." The pointing of the objective is no vague strategic declaration but is written explicitly into the imagery of the narrative structure. The combination of spiritual narrative and directional signal is precisely the arrangement that official communication customarily makes in texts of this kind.
Shen Yi, Weibo, 2026-08-01 11:22 — Army Day reading of Where the Banner Points on the 99th founding anniversary: the root and soul do not change; most scenes in Winning point to the other side of the strait, and "storming the beach" runs throughout.
Footnotes on Equipment — Two New Keys on Army Day
On the 99th Army Day itself, beyond the directional signal at the narrative level, the material level offered two concrete footnotes as well. That same afternoon, Shen Yi posted two pieces of equipment footage: the Type 055 destroyer Zunyi firing a YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile at a maritime target at night, and footage of the Type 076 carrier Sichuan — "aiming at the entirely new battlefield of far-seas unmanned warfare."
The details of the Sichuan post deserve a separate look. The crew of the Type 076 has come almost entirely from traditional landing ships, and "now they must overturn their former selves with their own hands" — fully domestically produced, with an entirely new system, aiming at nothing so simple as a platform upgrade but at the entirely new battlefield of far-seas unmanned warfare. This sentence lands the Army Day narrative's "the battlefield can be extended into new domains" onto a specific piece of equipment: when a team that grew up on landing ships is asked to pivot to unmanned warfare, behind the renewal of equipment lies the renewal of people — "overturning one's former self."
Read together, the two posts form an intertext with the narrative of Where the Banner Points: the Type 055's night hypersonic strike displays a sea-denial capacity beyond "storming the beach," while the Type 076's unmanned-warfare positioning is the physical carrier of "extending the battlefield." Beyond the directional signal (the other side of the strait), the equipment footnotes supply a capacity signal — in the Army Day communication package, narrative and hardware have stayed in step throughout.
Shen Yi, Weibo, 2026-08-01 13:02 (Type 076 carrier Sichuan: the entirely new battlefield of far-seas unmanned warfare; its crew has come almost entirely from traditional landing ships and must overturn its former self with its own hands; fully domestically produced); Shen Yi, Weibo, 2026-08-01 13:03 (Type 055 destroyer Zunyi firing a YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile at a maritime target at night).
A Self-Deprecating Take on Identity — The "Standing Vice-Carrier" and a Joke About Rank and Treatment
In the small hours of August 2, the Weibo account Baorong Wanwu Hengheshui (包容万物恒河水, a military-commentary account) added one more footnote on the Sichuan's identity: "Please correctly understand the Sichuan's identity as 'standing vice-carrier,' and show some respect for our Sichuan's rank and treatment." Set alongside the naval information of Army Day itself, this reads as a subtle communication strategy: in the official narrative, the Sichuan is "the entirely new battlefield of far-seas unmanned warfare," while in civilian military-enthusiast circles the self-deprecating label "standing vice-carrier" both acknowledges the gap between it and a true carrier and grants it a quasi-carrier positioning — sitting between an amphibious assault ship and an aircraft carrier, devoted to far-seas unmanned warfare.
"Show some respect for its rank and treatment" is a typical Hengheshui-style joke, yet it lands on a substance: the Sichuan's positioning is "an entirely new battlefield" in official discourse and "a vice-carrier" in popular discourse, and the two do not contradict each other — one speaks to the mission domain, the other to its place in the system. Placed alongside Shen Yi's earlier reading on this page ("overturning one's former self"), the narrative of the Sichuan's identity becomes complete: fully domestically produced in equipment, far-seas unmanned warfare in mission, and — within the overall system — the number-two platform beneath the carriers.
Baorong Wanwu Hengheshui (包容万物恒河水), Weibo, 2026-08-02 00:01 — please correctly understand the Sichuan's identity as "standing vice-carrier" and show respect for its rank and treatment; the Sichuan aims at the entirely new battlefield of far-seas unmanned warfare.