Student from Taiwan played a key role in safeguarding his community in Beijing during pandemic outbreak and is working to establish closer ties between young people across the Straits.
Chen Wencheng from Taiwan, a postdoctoral student at Peking University, had been doing volunteer work in his neighborhood since Spring Festival. This was the first Lunar New Year holiday he didn't celebrate in his hometown of Zhanghua, Taiwan, during his nine-year stay in Beijing.
Chen, 31, from the university's department of philosophy and religious studies, chose to stay in Beijing's Haidian District with his pregnant wife, who gave birth to their daughter last month. After the COVID- 19 outbreak hit Beijing in late January, he soon applied to be a community volunteer to help with pandemic prevention and control.
He started work on the day he signed as a volunteer on Feb4, with his duties including such tasks as checking passes and the temperature of people entering the community or delivering food and other necessities to his neighbors in self-quarantine.
The buildings in the community have five floors with no elevators. Chen sometimes had dozens of deliveries each day, including big rice bags and barrels of cooking oil, among other daily supplies.
"Those were heavy, and that's why the community needed us younger people to help, "Chen says.
"The volunteer job looks like petty work, but it matters as it enhances the safety of the more than 2, 000 residents in our community, "Chen says. "The work also allowed me to get to know more of my neighbors, which makes the whole community feel like a big family. "
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