Migrant worker makes liaising with city career
Print Edition
YUAN Jing, 39, came to Shanghai as a migrant worker more than 20 years ago in search of a job. It was an unlikely beginning for a woman who would one day rise to become Party chief in an upmarket residential complex.
At the Pudong Star River community in the Huamu area, Yuan serves as a kind of community liaison officer, trying to ensure harmony among the 290 households. Her work is made more challenging by the fact that 20 percent of residents are expats from the United States, Thailand and other countries.
“I recognize almost all of them, and can even remember their pets’ names,” Yuan said.
Yuan has not forgotten her roots, saying migrant workers play an important part in Shanghai’s development and more needs to be done to help with their living conditions.
But she adds that migrant workers must play their part in this too.
“Migrant workers need to learn to respect themselves if they want others to respect them, and they should keep studying and develop relationships with others if they want to live here,” she said. “They need to integrate into society."
Yuan hails from Linyi City in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong. She left her hometown at 17, seeking a better life. Her first job was at a sportswear factory in the Pudong New Area.
She still remembers crying when she first saw the desolate tracts of farmland in the then undeveloped Pudong and the shabby dormitory where she would live.
“I hadn’t expected such dismal surroundings,” she said. “They were worse than my hometown.”
While working 10-hour shifts as a sewing machinist she scraped together 700 yuan (US$112) for a computer course and taught herself English. It pays to be well armed if you are going into battle, Yuan figured.
People began to notice this ambitious, capable young woman. She was elected as Communist Party Youth League branch secretary and began organizing events for migrant workers, such as table tennis games and movie screenings. In 1995, Yuan became the first migrant worker in Pudong to join the Communist Party of China.
Yuan married a Shanghai man, had a son and several years later started a new job in the Ling’er residential complex in the Puxing neighborhood.
In 2010, she was reassigned to do similar work in the nearby Zhengyi residential complex of 1,653 households, many with longstanding grievances.
Mundane problems that had grown out of all proportion — including a dispute about the noise made by table tennis players. Yuan solved this by converting an abandoned garbage room in the complex into a table tennis venue.
In time, she won the respect and trust of residents in the complex.
In 2011, Yuan was reassigned to a new position as Party chief of the Pudong Star River residential complex.
“I was nervous because it is a famous high-end residential complex with many expats,” she said.
And the challenges Yuan faced there took on a more multicultural aspect.
She recalls that a Hong Kong resident once berated her for visiting his home unannounced, when some of his family members were still sleeping.
“I realized then that I had to change my methods of working,” Yuan said.
She began carefully observing foreign residents and their living habits, and made appointments before visiting.
And she organized community festivals started a Peking opera lovers’ club, helped families fill forms and tackle safety hazards left behind by construction crews.
Yuan’s attention to detail is evident. On a stroll through the complex with a Shanghai Daily reporter recently, she yelled at workers to stop spraying insecticide as a woman pushing a baby stroller walked past.
Despite her achievements, Yuan is not resting on her laurels. She continues her studies with the goal of getting a bachelor’s degree from Fudan University.
“I want to keep working at community level until I retire,” she added.
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