Life is tough for the men who guard China's mountainous border with India, high on the hinterland of Tibet. Despite the constant dangers posed by the harsh high-altitude conditions, the soldiers' strong sense of camaraderie and the friendship of the local people have led many to regard the barren, windswept landscape as a second home. Li Yang reports from Gamba county in the Tibet autonomous region.
Their lives are even harder than the yaks'," said Chokyi, during her weekly visit to a border post halfway up a mountain 2 kilometers from her home in Tranglung, Gamba county.
A border defense company of the People's Liberation Army has been stationed at the post in the Tibet autonomous region - about 20 kilometers from China's border with India - since 1961.
Chokyi, who like many people from the Tibetan ethnic group has only one name, often brings the soldiers homemade Tibetan butter tea and highland barley flour. "It feels as though I'm calling on my own sons," she said.
The 60-something herdswoman has known almost every soldier in the company since the first day the "young men" came to the barren mountain - Tranglung means "windy place" in Tibetan - where wild winds batter the hillsides more than 200 days a year, carrying sand and small stones that sting the eyes.
Chokyi's life was saved by a medical officer in 1961. After that her mother, Lhakyi, visited the guard post to deliver gifts of homemade food and drinks. When she was asked why she visited the troops regularly for 53 years, right up until the last day of her life, Lhakyi, who died in 2013 at age 83, always said: "It was Chairman Mao who sent the young man to save my daughter. These young men are far from their mothers and they protect our lives with their own."
Chokyi said that when she dies, her daughter will continue the tradition and deliver gifts to the soldiers.