One of Lung Cu border guards’ tasks is to defend two communes which comprise of 21 villages sharing a 25.5km long borderline with the district of Ma Li Po in the Chinese province of Yunnan. This is a difficult terrain for border patrols to police the border.

Senior lieutenant colonel Nguyen Huu Ly, head of the Lung Cu border guard station, says, “We have to work very hard to fulfil our duties despite a lack of personnel to cope with property robbery and human trafficking in the area. One of our challenging tasks is how to defend the national territory and help the local people to develop household economies and observe regulations on food safety and hygiene to prevent epidemics."

Helping villagers repair their dilapidated houses

In addition, the border guards have worked with the Hoang Thach Cement Company to repair and build houses for poor villagers. As a result, many concrete houses have now been built in Seo Lung village to replace old dilapidated ones.

Ho Pha Sung, a poor man from Seo Lung village, says that he is over the moon at moving into a new house.

“Thanks to the border guards, we no longer worry about heavy rains and strong winds whenever the rainy seasons arrives,” he says. “Now we can spend more of our time on farming and developing our household economies.”

Providing medical check-ups for local villagers

Half the station’s detachment are under 30 years old and most of them come from the lowlands. Lieutenant Nguyen Hoang Ha recalls that after finishing school, he was assigned to work at the Lung Cu Border Guard Station in August 2008 as head of the mass mobilisation team.

Every day, he and his men go to villages to disseminate the Party and State’s policies and guidelines and encourage them to defend the national border.

“Even though it is hard work, we feel very happy to be treated as their relatives whenever we call at their houses,” says Ha.

Another important task of the Lung Cu borderguard station is to defend the flag pole on top of Rong Mountain, nearly 1,700m above sea level, and keep the flag flying in all weather conditions. The flag is 54 square metres in size, symbolising the 54 ethnic Vietnamese groups.

“As a rule, we have to replace the flag with a new one every week or every 10 days,” says Ha. “This is really difficult task we have to brace against strong winds at such a high altitude.”