Female Peking University student and former marine speaks with Xi
From North China's Shanxi province, Song Xi was admitted to the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences of Peking University in 2012 at the age of 18. As a junior student, she joined the marines of the PLA Navy to fulfill her childhood dream and stayed there for two years.
With a crew-cut, white shirt and black pants, Song Xi looks more like a soldier than an average female undergraduate at Peking University.
"You remind me of the female soldier in the movie Operation Red Sea," President Xi Jinping told the 24-year-old during a visit to Peking University on Wednesday.
The movie was based on the People's Liberation Army Navy's prompt evacuations of hundreds of Chinese and foreign nationals from the troubled coast of Yemen in 2015.
Song was the only student who spoke at the on-campus symposium with Xi.
From North China's Shanxi province, she was admitted to the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences of Peking University in 2012 at the age of 18. As a junior student, she joined the marines of the PLA Navy to fulfill her childhood dream and stayed there for two years.
"The transformation from student to soldier taught me that college students cannot isolate themselves from the masses," Song said at the symposium.
Besides academic excellence, she is also talented in other ways. For example, as the lead singer of the Peking University Student Choir, she won two gold medals for China at the eighth World Choir Games in 2014.
Others might think she had already lived a wonderful youth, but she had another goal to achieve – to be a People's Liberation Army soldier. So, she decided to join the military in her junior year.
After an assessment in real-time situational combat, she became a scout of the Navy Marine Corps with excellent scores in 2015.
In her two years of military life, Song participated in a variety of training activities, such as search and rescue in cabins and naval gunfire. The girl in her 20s left her footprint in the South China Sea islands and the Gulf of Aden.
In December 2016, Song became the only female soldier of the 25th Navy Fleet for escort missions in the Gulf of Aden. She witnessed the Chinese fleet saving all 19 Syrian sailors from pirates after a seven-hour mission in April 2017.
"Only those who have experienced it can feel exactly how powerful China is now, so I'm very thankful for being selected to be a part of the escort mission," Song said.
