Root-seeking journey

In the first year, based on headstone information, Yu sent more than 100 letters, looking for clues about the martyrs' families.

However, 40 were undelivered due to the recipients' incorrect information.

"It has been much more difficult than I expected, because there were many mistakes in inscriptions, such as the wrong spelling of names due to dialects and the administrative division change as time goes by," Yu says.

He corrected about 70 mistakes in the martyrs' information list.

It was a difficult time but he was determined to push through. After all, these men had given everything.

The turning point came some months later, when he got a letter from a young man named Liu Yao from Henan province, who told him that he was the son of Liu Yizhai, one of the 142 martyrs.

"My father began serving in the army when I was 4, and he died when I was 7 or 8. Years later, my mother also passed away," Liu wrote in his letter.

He told Yu that his uncle, also a soldier, came to Yangloudong looking for his father, but returned in vain.

Before his uncle's death, he asked Liu to leave a spot for his father in the family grave.

The letter encouraged Yu to keep searching for the martyrs' families.

That year, he received letters from relatives of eight martyrs. Some told him that they suffered a lot during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), because some of the fallen soldiers were believed to be deserters.

Since 2006, Yu visited more than 15 provinces and regions to find the relatives.

Before every trip, he always carried his medical records in his suitcase, in case he fell ill on the long journey.

To cover the increasing fees on the road, Yu even sold his house for 44,500 yuan ($6,805).

In 2007, Yu took a train and traveled for more than 20 hours to get to Taiyuan, Shanxi province, and meet the relatives of martyr Wen Bingren.

Checking one house after another, Yu finally met the martyr's younger brother, Wen Binggen, who was then 74. He told Yu that their grandparents and parents had been waiting for his brother to appear.

"My parents cried many times for my missing elder brother. I didn't even know where Hubei is, the place you said where my brother is buried," he told Yu.

In the past 15 years, Yu helped 117 martyrs find their relatives and among them, 67 families of these soldiers have visited the cemetery to pay homage to those who bravely sacrificed their lives for the sake of the homeland.