Soldiers Guard the Land

In 1983, the great tide of million-strong troop cuts swept through the barracks. Lin Zhicheng, a battalion-level political instructor; Wang Jinshan, an infantry company commander; and Jiang Zhirong, a company political instructor—three battalion- and company-level officers who had together endured the flames of border war—took off their collar tabs and cap insignia and transferred to civilian work in the Chujiang Prefecture Justice Bureau in the south. From men who commanded hundreds of officers and soldiers, they were reduced to ordinary clerks starting from scratch. They crowded into a cramped hostel for demobilized military personnel, bearing the loss brought by the gap in rank and position, and facing a completely unfamiliar battlefield of grassroots justice—no guns or smoke of battle, only boundary disputes between neighbors, backlogged notarization cases, and the constraints of rural ties and local customs, every bit of it a new test they had never encountered. Relying on the military底色 engraved in their bones, the three plunged into practical work, each displaying his strengths: Lin Zhicheng calmly polished legal education materials, turning a political officer's pen into down-to-earth legal reasoning; Wang Jinshan took on logistics and miscellaneous affairs, using the tenacity of a troop leader to sort out a thousand tangled threads; Jiang Zhirong rooted himself in the front line of notarization, using empathetic, gentle methods to unblock the people's emotional knots. They ran through market fairs, went down into village lanes, mediated disputes, and handled backlogged cases, folding the army's methods into everyday life, gnawing through one hard bone after another in the reconstruction of grassroots rule of law. There is no legendary tale of counterattack and triumph, only the forbearing turn of a generation of demobilized military officers. With soldiers' hearts they forge a legal soul, and amid the smoke and fire of ordinary life, they guard another stretch of mountains and rivers. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Soldiers Guard the Land — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠