A married couple, Wang Jicai and Wang Shihua, has guarded an isolated island in China's Bohai Sea for 30 years. The island, named Kaishan, is located near the border area of the Japanese and South Korean high seas, 12 kilometers away from Lianyungang, Jiangsu province. Measuring just 0.013 square kilometers in area, life on the sparse island is extremely hard.
Wang Jicai and his wife kept the island for 32 years and wrote a sackful of work diaries documenting the main events that occurred on the island each day. On every fine day, the first thing that on the couple’s list was to raise the national flag. Wang Jicai once said: "The island is small, but it is a part of our motherland."
What Wang Jicai and his wife raised is not only a national flag, but also a determination of defending the country’s territory. Due to the harsh natural environment of the island, the national flag is easy to fade and break. Wang Jicai and his wife paid for the 200 national flags themselves in the last 32 years.
The patrol of the whole island takes about an hour, and there are many steep steps. Wang Jicai's health was not good and Wang Shihua also suffered from leg disease. Wang said that they usually took each side to walk around the island and counted steps. There are altogether 508 steps on the island. With more than 23,000 hours of patrolling the island in the last 32 years, each piece of rock is a testament to the couple's determination.
After Wang Jicai's death, patrolling the island is replaced by three young militiamen. Local people habitually refer to Wang Jicai as the "island owner", "Wang Kaishan" or "Model Wang". In their hearts, Wang Jicai just like the Kaishan Island, standing steadily. Wang's determination will be remembered by everyone, just like the national flag, waving in the heart of every one of us.
