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A group of 221 volunteers for the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting being held in Beijing from Nov 5 through 11 took up their positions at Beijing Capital International Airport on Saturday.
Their main tasks include checking on foreign guests as they arrive, guiding them to the correct shuttle services for their assigned hotels and to seeing the guests off when they leave at the conclusion of the events.
The volunteers were selected from five universities in the capital - Beijing Normal University, Beijing International Studies University, the Central University of Finance and Economics, Peking University and the Beijing Institute of Technology.
The airport volunteers' duties are some of the longest for the meetings, covering from Nov 1 to 13. The position is manned around the clock and the volunteers work three separate shifts.
"We placed the volunteers at the airport as the first stop for foreign guests when they arrive, which is very important. They will be in charge of checking the information of each foreign guest attending the meeting and helping them find the right shuttle to their assigned hotels," said Guo Wenjie, deputy secretary of the Communist Youth League of Beijing.
"More than 30 hotels and four conference centers will be the main venues for guests staying in Beijing. These hotel and conference center names sound similar and even old Beijing residents might mistake their locations. Their English names are more confusing than their Chinese ones, so volunteers worked hard to remember and know the difference between the names and their locations," said Zhang Liangsong, director of the International Exchange Center of Beijing Foreign Affairs Office.
Li Shuo, a student majoring in English at Beijing International Studies University, is one of the volunteers.
Li, 25, and a postgraduate student, and another 27 students from her university were selected because of their excellent English-language skills and previous experience volunteering for major events.
Thanks to her training for such emergencies and as a team leader of the volunteers from Beijing International Studies University, Li arranged a volunteer to accompany the delegate to an airport lounge to rest and dispatched another volunteer to contact the driver of the shuttle that ferried the delegate to the airport. She also headed to the ticket office to change the delegate's flight schedule.
"She got her handbag back within an hour and left Beijing on the next plane. The entire situation was exactly like our rehearsal, and we just used our emergency plan to solve the problem," Li said.
