In the early days of the People's Republic of China, Yi Yan took root in the construction site in baoji-chengdu railway as a demobilized soldier. His poetry collections "Morning in Daba Mountain" and "On the Clouds" mostly focus on Shu Road, Qinling Mountain, Loushanguan, Dadu River, Jialing River and Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, reflecting the road construction situation in Bashan Qinling Mountain and expressing the lofty sentiments of builders in conquering dangerous mountains and waters and opening up roads. Yan Yi, who was born in the army, used to associate the war years in the north with the construction and life in the south. The builders and pioneers in his works are often the old Red Army and guerrilla fighters.
Yi Yan is also good at dealing with the hardships of pioneers romantically and poetically, and pays attention to creating a magical and romantic artistic conception. The poem "On the Clouds" wrote that the construction site was "in the clouds" and the tent was "in the clouds". "When we go to work, we come down from the clouds. /When we go to work, we go to heaven by cloud. " "When we are hungry,/cut off the pine branches on the clouds to cook; /thirsty,/drink the clear spring on the cloud. " Due to the pour of idealism, the hard life of farming reclamation has been dyed with bright colors.