'Little United Nations' in the good hands

Ti Gong

The Ronghua neighborhood in downtown Changning District is often called a “Little United Nations” because of its multicultural demographics. If that’s the case, Sheng Hong might be considered its “secretary general.”

A decade ago, 40-year-old Sheng quit a high-paying job at an American logistics company to work in the neighborhood, Shanghai’s first expat community. In 2013, she was named its Party secretary.

Under her leadership, the neighborhood has become a national model, with 20,000 residents from across the world living together harmoniously. Sheng has received widespread recognition for her work, including a visit to the neighborhood by President Xi Jinping a year ago.

“Learning how to handle all kinds of issues in a fair and judicious manner has been the best experience in my life,” said Sheng. “The sense of achievement has been far greater than I felt working for a foreign company.”

In China, all urban communities have neighborhood committees that serve as the grassroots arm of authority and act as gatekeepers over how the neighborhoods function.

Their importance came into sharp focus in Shanghai during the transition to citywide garbage sorting and recycling earlier this year. More recently, they played a dominant role in enforcing health and safety rules during the novel coronavirus outbreak. Sheng’s multicultural skills helped Ronghua weather the worst of the COVID-19 lockdown.

She brings a strong background to the job. After graduating in corporate management from Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Sheng studied business English at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Her enthusiasm, multinational skills and management prowess have won her high regard among many residents.

She lives far from Ronghua, which creates drawbacks in her personal life. She rarely has time to attend her 10-year-old son’s school activities or accompany her father, who suffers from cancer, to his medical appointments.

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Ronghua, often referred to as the Gubei International Community because of its location on Gubei Road, dates back to the 1980s. At that time, two residential blocks, mostly surrounded by farmland, were open for foreigners to purchase.

Gubei was especially attractive to expats because it's only a 10-minute drive to Hongqiao airport. By the mid-1990s, it was one of China’s first international communities.

The 2-square-kilometer area is home to 32,000 residents, about a third of them from overseas. Japanese and South Koreans are the two most prominent nationalities.

Like the United Nations itself, the neighborhood’s diversity can lead to conflicts among residents of different nationalities.

“Expats have a greater concept of privacy, so it's sometimes difficult for us to knock on their doors and talk with them when problems arise,” Sheng said.

One of Sheng’s initiatives is the creation of the Gubei Civic Center, a “chamber of counselors” comprised of residents from the community. Four expats sit on the nine-member chamber, which consults with Sheng’s team.

The counselors encourage everyone in the community to contribute ideas for the maintenance and management of the neighborhood. They bring feedback to monthly meetings, such as conflicts, suggested improvements and praise for systems that work well.

Counselors sometimes visit homes to deal with specific resident grievances. For instance, a Japanese resident once complained that a Chinese neighbor upstairs made too much noise at night. A counselor from Japan talked to both sides to help resolve the issue.

“Most of our foreign counselors have lived in Shanghai for decades, can speak fluent Chinese and understand and appreciate Chinese culture,” Sheng said.

One of the foreign counselors is Michelle Teope-Shen, a Filipina architect who has lived in China for 30 years. She was a project manager on the construction of the Grand Hotel Beijing in 1987.

“My passion for bridging Eastern and Western cultures led me to become a counselor for the residents’ chamber,” she said.

As a chamber counselor, Teope-Shen said she walks along Huangjinchengdao street in the neighborhood every day to chat with residents and observe the local environment.

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Counselors took an active role during implementation of garbage-sorting regulations, which were implemented in July. They provided multilingual translations and illustrated posters on how to handle the four different types of garbage.

Today, garbage-sorting accuracy in the neighborhood is 95 percent. When the pandemic forced expats returning to China to quarantine for 14 days, community staff came to their homes to collect their trash.

Some 2,200 foreign residents were quarantined. Sheng and her team kept in close contact with them during their confinement to make sure their needs were met.

“It was important to visit quarantined residents to make sure they had sufficient food and daily necessities,” she said.

Dane Simon Lichtenberg, a furniture company chief executive and Magnolia Gold Award winner who has lived in the city for almost 30 years, said the work of community staff has been “very comprehensive, calm and professional,” which made him feel safer.

A quarantined Japanese resident presented Sheng two boxes of throat lozenges from Japan after his home quarantine ended. Sheng has long suffered from a chronic sore throat and went through a box of throat lozenges every day during the pandemic.

“The pandemic forces people to keep socially distanced from one another, but the mental distance has narrowed,” said Sheng.

The Hongqiao International Community Governance Academy, Shanghai’s first research institute focused on international community governance, was created in the neighborhood to train professionals and develop standards for other international communities across the country.

The Gubei Civic Center also provides a grassroots channel for residents’ views to be passed along to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. Residents have submitted more than 500 recommendations on 30 draft laws. Twenty suggestions have been incorporated into law.

Ti Gong

Ti Gong