Veteran Party member guards the motherland's border alone for 32 years

Original title: Half a century guarding the western frontier, I keep loneliness company while guarding prosperity

-- A record of **veteran Party member Wei Deyou's border-guarding career

Wei Deyou on the **Salbulak grassland (photographed on June 2).

San Nong Zhi Tong Che comprehensive report: Dusk on the **Salbulak grassland on the China-Kazakhstan border is a vast and lonely kind of beauty.

As the orange-red sun sinks toward the vast horizon, the chill deepens in the heart of the grassland, night opens its mouth to swallow the earth, and the solitary white poplars stand tall and firm, lingering in the faint glow of the setting sun.

Treading the afterglow of the rosy clouds, the herders of the grassland crack their whips and drive their cattle and sheep, migrating from the spring and autumn pastures of the Salbulak grassland adjacent to the border line to summer pastures elsewhere.

On the boundless grassland, only 76-year-old Wei Deyou and his more than 100 sheep remain. Having guarded the border for more than half a century, this veteran Party member with 32 years of Party membership has grown used to a life of solitude.

Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Xiaolong

Wei Deyou draws salty and bitter alkaline water from the well at his door (photographed on June 2).