Spotlight: Danger and honor: everyday life of Chinese peacekeepers in Lebanon, DR Congo

On an ordinary but challenging day of late July, a convoy of transport and medical vehicles carrying Chinese peacekeepers left a camp in Lebanon around 6:30 a.m. local time (0330 GMT) for the "Blue Line," a 121-km-long section of Lebanon's border with Israel, where hundreds of thousands of mines had been laid.

The convoy members belonged to the 14th batch of Chinese peacekeeping troops which currently operate in Lebanon and are mainly tasked with clearing mines, constructing roads, providing humanitarian aid and helping mark a temporary Lebanon-Israel border.

For security reasons on their way to the "Blue Line," all of the Chinese peacekeepers wore U.N. helmets and all the windows of the vehicles were shut, as required.

The convoy had a difficult time navigating the mountain roads, and a Xinhua correspondent who was traveling with the Chinese peacekeepers on the day before the 88th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), could feel the bumps in the road.

On the journey, many ruins and bullet holes on residential houses could be seen, which revealed the recent destruction war had inflicted upon the region.

More than one hour later, the convoy arrived in the "Blue Line" area,and the peacekeepers got out of the vehicles and headed for the mine ground under the scorching sun.

From where the vehicles where parked to the area where the mines were to be cleared, there was a "safe passage," two meters wide and with wire fences on both sides.

"Today's task is to maintain the passage," said Wang Yunlong, leader of the platoon, meaning the unit needed to check and clear the passage again to ensure its safety because rains and landslides may push fresh mines into it.

In temperatures as high as 40 degrees Celsius, Li Jiang, deputy head of the mine-clearing team, walked cautiously toward the site and began to examine the area with a mine detector.

Soon after, the detector beeped, and Li marked the place. Several minutes later, he found remains of a cluster bomb. He carefully extracted it, a process that Chinese peacekeepers describe as performing "Taiji boxing" with death.

Maintaining the passage is not easier than clearing a new area because the mine detector can detect a lot of signals in the passage, which may come from a segment of iron wire or other debris, he said, and each signal must be taken seriously to avoid any accident.

Chinese peacekeepers such as Li deal with death every day and make silent contributions to keeping the world peace.

Far away, on the African continent, in the primeval forests 310 km south of Bukavu, capital of South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, China's national flag and the United Nations flag flew together over a camp where a 28-member Chinese peacekeeping engineering detachment was based.

They were the 18th batch of the Chinese peacekeeping engineering detachment in DR Congo and were tasked with building and repairing a road line through the Mitumba mountain range.

At 6:30 a.m. local time (0530 GMT) Pang Longfeng, head of the detachment, led two members and two guards to the working site 25 km away in the Mitumba mountains, traveling on a narrow and dusty road.

"It is okay in the summer. If it's in the rainy season, puddles on the road can swallow the engine of a vehicle, and we have to spend half a day to reach the working site," he said.

In the rainy season, floods frequently ruin the road sections they have just finished and they have to repair them again and again, he said.

Their lunch was simple -- two packs of biscuits, two pancakes, a bottle of water and an orange. If the weather is fine, they can cook some noddles with portable gas stoves. Yet the most precious thing for them is water, especially drinking water.

Pang and his detachment usually have to spend lots of time to find water, although the International Red Cross has built some conduits to channel mountain springs to nearby villages.

The local temperature can sometimes sink as low as 1 degree Celsius or it can rise as high as 30 degrees Celsius at noon. Moreover, Pang and his detachment have to protect themselves from mosquito bites.

Around the camp at night, insects chirp, the stars twinkle and the moon shines brightly.

"Actually, tranquility and peace are the best gifts for Africa," said Liu Jianbo, a detachment member who was on sentry duty Thursday night. Endi