This year marks the 10th anniversary of the rescue base, and so far, not a single traveler has been injured or killed due to blizzards—a testament to the highest honor for the 20 members of the Mayitas Rescue Base.
The climate here is harsh, rarely seen anywhere else in the world
According to statistics, the Mayitas Wind Zone experiences strong winds of Force 8 or above on average about 150 days a year. The wind force here is typically one to two levels stronger than in other areas, with an average wind speed of 9 meters per second and peak speeds reaching up to 40 meters per second—rarely seen anywhere in the world. Experts from Xinjiang's transportation research institutes have analyzed the severe weather in this area, attributing the wind disasters in Mayitas to the lack of trees. The highways are flanked by endless Gobi deserts with nothing to slow down the wind. Some parts of the wind zone have started afforestation efforts, but the still “bare” Mayitas remains the area worst hit by disasters.
During a rescue on January 2, a rescued traveler returning from Beijing kept saying, “I was so scared, I’m finally safe.” The terror of a Mayitas blizzard is hard for those who haven’t experienced it firsthand to truly grasp. “People who haven’t seen it really get frightened. During rescues, we’ve seen countless trapped travelers crying in fear. Once, we rescued a traveler from Jiangsu who had never seen such a blizzard. When he saw us, he dropped to his knees and said he’d give us his car and even ten thousand yuan—just to get him out. He didn’t think he could survive. We told him we didn’t want the money, we’d definitely get him out safely,” Wang Shigang said.
For rescue workers, blizzards are nothing new, and they’ve learned survival skills in these conditions. When the wind reaches Force 8, it’s already very hard for one person to move forward—usually, three or five people hold hands and walk together. The wind speed in the zone is so fast it becomes hard to breathe. During rescue operations, team members often hold their breath for a stretch, then turn around to take a deep breath before moving on. What normally takes just a few minutes to run a hundred or two hundred meters can take half an hour or even an hour in the wind zone.
Most people can’t drive in a blizzard. Wang Shigang describes blizzard conditions as “like the pot steaming mantou (steamed buns)”—two people facing each other can’t even see each other’s faces. Experience is crucial in such situations. And staring at the swirling snowstorm for too long can also make people feel nauseous; rescuers call it “snow dizziness.” “When a blizzard hits, we can’t keep the car windows closed—we have to stick our heads out the window to see the road. Sometimes someone has to lead the way in front, and the cars behind follow,” Li Jiancheng said.
Two comrades were once lost
The harsh climate in the Mayitas Wind Zone means that every time a road is built here, a rescue team must be deployed. Provincial Highway 201, opened in 2002, connects Emin County to Urumqi. Before that, the main road in and out of Emin County was Provincial Highway 318. Opened in the 1960s or 1970s, Highway 318 also runs through the Mayitas Wind Zone. Locals refer to its wind zone section as “Old Windy Pass.”
Li Jiancheng is the most experienced member of the entire rescue team, responsible for driving snow-clearing vehicles. He was part of the original Old Windy Pass Rescue Team. Two members of the Old Windy Pass Rescue Base lost their lives during a rescue operation—a story passed down among all the rescue teams in the Mayitas Wind Zone. “That was back in 1989. After dark, the Old Windy Pass Anti-Snowstorm Base received a distress call. The reported wind force was Force 9, and there were vehicles and travelers trapped on the Tuoli section of Provincial Highway 318. Rescue workers arrived at the scene, but the snowstorm was so fierce they couldn’t even move their own vehicles—the equipment back then was far less advanced than it is now. The rescuers had to get out of their vehicles to search for the trapped travelers. There were no radios or walkie-talkies back then, and these two team members got separated from the others,” Wang Shigang recalled. “Everyone kept waiting for them to come back, but they never returned. It was a windy spot—you can’t stay out there too long—so they had to pull back first.”
Three days later, the bodies of the two advance team members were found—about four or five kilometers from where the rescue vehicles had been parked, just two or three hundred meters from the edge of the road. “The thing rescuers fear most is leaving the road. Once you leave, you lose your sense of direction and can easily get lost. The Old Windy Pass Rescue Team was established in the 1960s or 1970s—those two had plenty of experience, but they still couldn’t beat the brutal weather,” Li Jiancheng said.
Fortunately, no similar tragedies have occurred since. Since the establishment of the Mayitas Anti-Snowstorm Rescue Base, there hasn’t been a single case of rescue personnel casualties.
Everyone has arthritis
In February 2009, during a rescue mission, rescuers encountered a newlywed couple who had just returned from their honeymoon. Their clothes weren’t very thick. Due to objective conditions, the rescue vehicle couldn’t get close to theirs, so rescuers had to escort the couple from their vehicle to the rescue vehicle—a distance of about a hundred or two hundred meters on foot. “Just after walking that hundred or two hundred meters, when we took them to a nearby hospital, we found both their legs were so swollen from the cold they couldn’t walk,” Li Jiancheng said.
Working in such an environment, arthritis has become an occupational hazard for everyone. “Every time we go out, we wear as much clothing as possible. Some of the veterans wear two down jackets. But even fully bundled up, the cold can penetrate your clothes in about five minutes outdoors, making you feel like you’re not wearing anything. We can usually stay outside for about half an hour, but an hour is basically the limit,” Wang Shigang said.
But the worst isn’t the cold—it’s the rapid temperature shifts. Inside the rescue vehicle, temperatures are usually above freezing, while outdoors it’s around minus 30 degrees Celsius. During missions, team members constantly experience drastic temperature changes of over 30 degrees Celsius, making colds a winter-long ailment for base staff.
The wind and snow outdoors feel like needles, seeping in through any tiny gap—in sleeves, collars, or shoes. Once inside, the snow melts, but venture back out and it immediately refreezes. On shorter rescue missions, say two or three hours, ice crystals build up in the rescuers’ boots. Longer missions mean their sleeves and pant legs freeze solid, and their faces become numb—no smiles possible. “Every time we get back, no one goes to sleep right away. First, we change out of wet clothes, dry off, and then wait an hour or two before our hands and feet can move properly again,” Wang Shigang said.
Monthly salary is about 2,000 yuan
The base currently has 20 team members, along with 12 large loaders and snow-clearing vehicles, plus one armored vehicle. “The military removed the cannon barrel and classified components from the armored vehicle—it works great for us. It can drive over any pothole and is used specifically to transport stranded travelers,” Wang Shigang said. Having witnessed decades of upgrades to the anti-snowstorm rescue team’s equipment, Li Jiancheng feels particularly content: “From 2002 until now, we’ve gone through three sets of down jackets—one warmer than the last. Back in the 1980s when I started work, we wore leather coats and pants—each leather coat weighed seven or eight kilograms, making walking in the snow even harder. As for snow-clearing vehicles, back when I was with the Old Windy Pass Rescue Team, the whole team had just one bulldozer. A bulldozer can’t blast snow dozens of meters away like a snow-clearing vehicle—it could only push snow to the sides of the road, forming walls several meters high that vehicles had to drive through.”
Every time before a mission, rescue workers deliberately keep it from their families, only coming clean once they return. “I can’t tell my wife the truth—she wouldn’t sleep a wink all night,” Wang Shigang said. His wife also works for the Tacheng Highway Bureau and is well aware of the risks her husband takes: “She’s fairly supportive. We know most of the families here. They worry, but they support us.” The base is all male—the youngest are in their mid-twenties, the oldest is Li Jiancheng, now 47. Talking about his job, Li Jiancheng doesn’t see himself as a hero: “Someone else would do it if it weren’t us. We take the pay, so we do the job.”
The salary Li Jiancheng “earns his keep” with is about 2,000 yuan a month. With the longest tenure, he’s the highest-paid in the team.
The monthly salary that Li Jiancheng wanted to "be worthy of" was about 2,000 yuan. With the longest tenure on the team, he was the highest earner.