Fallen officer awarded as hero

Zhang Bingyi, a veteran traffic management officer with the Dong Ujimchin Banner Public Security Bureau, has been posthumously awarded the title of Second-Class Hero Model of the National Public Security System following his death in the line of duty.

Zhang, 48, died from injuries sustained during a multi-vehicle collision while directing traffic during a severe blizzard on National Highway G331 in January 2024. The Ministry of Public Security formalized the honor in December 2025, recognizing his 23-year career in law enforcement.

In his final moments, Zhang was still doing what he had done for 23 years — answering a call, moving toward danger and trying to keep others safe.

On January 13, 2024, extreme weather conditions in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region reduced visibility on National Highway G331 to less than 20 meters. Though off-duty earlier that morning to attend to a family medical matter, Zhang responded to an emergency recall as weather conditions deteriorated. According to dashboard camera footage and police records, Zhang was actively guiding a stranded motorist through whiteout conditions at approximately 4:30 pm, when an oncoming vehicle, obscured by blowing snow, initiated a chain-reaction collision. Zhang was struck during the incident and later succumbed to his injuries despite emergency medical intervention.

Dedication to duty

His wife remembered that just two days before his death, after Zhang returned from an awards event in Xiliinhot, she had prepared a meal to celebrate. He had barely taken a few bites when a work call came in. He put down his bowl and left.

That had happened many times. Family members said that at his busiest, Zhang spent more than 300 days a year away on investigations or duty assignments. His daughter said that as a child, she often felt her father would leave without saying much. Only after his death did she gradually understand that he was not indifferent to home. He had simply carried too many other people in his heart as well.

Born in February 1975, Zhang joined the police force in 2001. Over the next two decades, he worked in detention management, criminal investigation and traffic management. The posts changed, but his standards did not. Colleagues and family members said he believed that whatever the job, it had to be done well.

After his death, his daughter helped sort through his belongings. Zhang had lived simply and left behind so few personal items that they did not fill two woven sacks. But one suitcase was packed with certificates, medals and commendations — a quiet record of a life spent mostly away from the spotlight.

Zhang spent nine years in detention management early in his career. The work was routine and often invisible, involving logistics, supervision, transfers and patrols. But he never treated it as minor. Whether recording daily operations or handling detainee management, he was careful and patient.

During those years, the detention center reported no major mistakes, and Zhang earned a third-class merit citation.

In April 2010, he moved to the criminal investigation brigade, a role that his family said made him even busier.

When he came home with injuries, he would brush them off, saying he had been scratched by accident. His colleagues knew better. Behind those simple explanations were arrests, confrontations and long stretches of work that blurred days into nights.

Over 13 years in criminal investigation, Zhang took part in solving more than 1,000 criminal cases. During a nationwide fugitive-tracking campaign in 2011, he traveled to more than 30 cities in six months and helped apprehend seven fugitives.

On Chinese New Year's Eve in 2014, while many families were gathering for reunion dinners, he was working on a jewelry store theft case involving more than 400,000 yuan ($59,080) in stolen property. The case was solved in 17 days.

In 2015, while pursuing a suspect in a violent case, Zhang and his colleagues tracked the man to another city. During the arrest, the suspect suddenly pulled a knife and resisted. Zhang lunged forward, pinned him down and suffered a cut to his arm.

During the national campaign against organized crime from 2018 to 2021, Zhang helped dismantle a gang that had long operated in Xiliin Gol League in Inner Mongolia, a breakthrough case for local authorities. In another major case in 2021, he and fellow investigators traveled tens of thousands of kilometers, interviewed more than 130 people, produced more than 100 interview records and gathered more than 180 sets of materials.

To find one missing clue, they spent days going through two decades of files in a power plant archive room.

Even after the case was closed, Zhang insisted on cataloging every piece of evidence and returning every borrowed office item to its proper place. A colleague recalled that he even cleaned the temporary office before leaving.

Final post

In 2023, Zhang transferred to traffic management. Some around him thought the move might finally allow him to slow down and spend more time with his family. Instead, he studied traffic laws, enforcement procedures and case-handling rules late into the night, determined to master the new work as quickly as possible.

He once said that if he was going to serve as a traffic police officer, he should live up to the title, just as he had tried to do in a criminal investigation.

For Zhang, traffic work was not only about tickets or roadside checks. Dong Ujimchin Banner sits on China's northern frontier, where winters are long and severe. In heavy snow and the local whiteout conditions known as "baimaofeng", patrols were often about protecting lives.

His daughter said he was the kind of person who would stop to drag discarded tires away from the roadside because they might cause an accident. If he saw a vehicle pulled over, he would walk over and ask if help was needed.

Once, while on a business trip, he learned that a herder was stranded after his vehicle ran out of fuel. Zhang immediately called colleagues on duty and asked them to deliver gasoline, then called again half an hour later to make sure the problem had been resolved.

These were small things. But they explained what safety meant to him.

There was another side to Zhang. His WeChat profile picture showed the back of a police officer beneath the words: "Once we choose a distant destination, we care only about pressing on through wind and rain". His background image, however, was a family photo of his wife and daughter.

It was a quiet contrast familiar to many police families: duty on one side, tenderness on the other.

During his lifetime, Zhang received one second-class merit citation, four third-class merit citations and one formal commendation.

yangzekun@chinadaily.com.cn