Gubei charms dignitaries with services for the community
A COMMUNITY that gathers, shares and inspires is what foreign ambassadors, on a trip to Shanghai, found about the Gubei community.
The spirit of the community is epitomized in the three-story Gubei Civic Center that serves the residents.
The community’s Ronghua residential area has 33,000 residents from over 50 countries and regions.
Besides administrative services and cultural experiences, the center also offers meeting spaces for residents to discuss issues in their neighborhood.
The ambassadors met some residents who had gathered in a room to discuss proposals to improve a popular street in the community. Several projects were being reviewed and voted on.
One of the residents was Michelle Wang, an expatriate from the Philippines who has been living in the Gubei neighborhood for about 12 years.
“I have been participating in committee meetings at which we discuss concerns and issues of our neighborhood, and also our intentions to improve things,” she told the ambassadors.
Another expat at the meeting was Lauren Rogers, secondary vice principal of Yew Chung International School of Shanghai, Puxi. She moved to China two years ago.
“I teach geography and my background is urban development, so I’m very excited to attend the discussion to look at how to better our community,” she said. “It’s been really lovely to be able to learn about Chinese culture through various initiatives of the Gubei community.”
Needs taken into consideration
Fariz Mehdawi, the Palestinian ambassador in China, said he was impressed by the services Shanghai provides for expats. “People might face a lot of challenges in a foreign country to become acquainted with the situation. It is quite encouraging to see that here in Shanghai the government has already taken their needs into consideration,” he said. “This would be one of the most favorite destinations for international expatriates.”
Because of the diversity of the population, the community is also one of the first in the country to make suggestions to national and local lawmakers on legislative issues.
The ambassadors were told that residents had made over 1,000 suggestions to 55 draft laws in the past five years, with 72 of them passed as law.
Robert Sterling Quant, the Bahamas ambassador in China, was impressed that many suggestions proposed by the public during the legislation had been made into law. “It is interesting to see that a great number of people participate in the legislative process here in China, and that here in Shanghai a lot of expats are actively involved in it,” he said. “Sometimes most people don’t get involved in politics, but everything in politics affects people on a daily basis.”
During their visit to the center, the ambassadors tried their hand at Chinese calligraphy, playing the piano and having their blood pressure measured, just as community residents do.