On October 21, according to the WeChat official account "released by Xinjiang", the Forestry and Grassland Bureau of Yizhou District, Hami City issued a notice on the progress of the investigation on the destruction of the navigation mark "serving the people":
Recently, the destruction of the "Serve the People" navigation mark in Qincheng Township, Yizhou District, Hami City has attracted widespread attention from society. According to the third national land survey, the area belongs to other grasslands. The Forestry and Grassland Bureau of Yizhou District, Hami City, has launched an investigation into this incident. Zhang and Li, who were involved in the destruction of navigation marks, have been questioned multiple times and identified on site. Law enforcement personnel and experts have been organized to conduct on-site inspections, and a third-party survey company has conducted on-site surveys.
After investigation, in 2024, Zhang Moulong (pseudonym Xinjiang Pingtou Ge) and Li drove off-road vehicles drifting at the "Serve the People" navigation mark, causing damage to the grassland surface in the area. At present, the investigation and evidence collection have been completed, the case handling is in progress, and the handling results will be announced in a timely manner.
According to previous media reports, recently, the online blogger "Slightly Reliable Hotel" discovered the five characters "Serve the People" on the southeastern Gobi Desert in Hami, Xinjiang while browsing satellite maps. The area around the big characters was damaged, so he decided to drive to repair the slogans. These big characters have withstood 60 years of sandstorms, but unfortunately, they couldn't withstand some people's few minutes of revelry. After 6 days of arrival at the site and on-site observation, the blogger and friends traveled to all mining companies and sand factories in Hami, searching for black sand and gravel similar to the Gobi Desert. In the end, after repeated experiments, they repaired these "scars" with 27 vehicles and 20 tons of sand and gravel. In the end, we gathered five people and the efficiency was fast. We even repaired some of the marks left by the small truck rolling back and forth. As all the stones on the 27th truck were scattered, we ended the construction. Later, he contacted a commercial remote sensing satellite company to take pictures of the repaired slogan.
On October 14th, the official account of "Changguang Satellite" posted a comparison chart before and after the repair, and wrote that the "Jilin-1" satellite recorded the entire process of destruction and repair of the "serving the people" character in the Hami Gobi Desert. In 2024, the phrase "serving the people" in the Hami Gobi Desert will gradually be damaged by drifting vehicles. Off road enthusiasts drift recklessly on slogans, leaving dazzling circular marks, especially the terrain damage in the middle of the word "people", which is extremely serious. The depth of the ravines left behind can reach one palm, not only destroying the Gobi landscape, but also desecrating history and ancestors. After learning that the slogan had been destroyed, blogger "Slightly Reliable Hotel" drove over 2000 kilometers to Hami and searched for two days and two nights on the Gobi Desert before finding black stones that matched the landmark color and buying 20 tons. Subsequently, he enlisted four helpers and spent a week filling in all the potholes left by the drift. After the repair was completed, we contacted our staff and confirmed the final repair effect through the imagery of the "Jilin-1" satellite.
Where did these big characters come from? According to a military report by CCTV, the Eighth Aviation School of the People's Liberation Army of China was established in Hami, Xinjiang in 1967. In the vast Gobi Desert, in order to prevent pilots from getting lost during flight training, the instructor and students decided to hand draw landmarks on the Gobi Desert. According to the flight training route, they used the method of "scraping the black stone to expose the alkaline soil" to dig out five landmarks such as "serving the people" with a shovel in the Gobi Desert after several months... Now, although the eighth aviation school has become history, the spirit behind the slogan has been flowing in the blood of the people's air force!
