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Model worker never caught off guard
By Cui Xiaohuo (China Daily/Olympian)
Updated: 2007-09-19 09:38

 

On Wangfujing shopping street in downtown Beijing, Xie Haibao is easily camouflaged by the veteran soldiers wearing Mao Zedong pins, hawkers and monks sporting digital cameras.

Xie Haitao on Wangfujing Street.

As one of China's 3,000 model workers, the security guard shares the honor, awarded every five years, with NBA All-Star Yao Ming and world champion hurdler Liu Xiang.

Not that he likes to brag about it.

"Newspapers like to lump me together with the big shots," said Xie. "I don't care about it that much. They just want to sell more copies, I guess."

The 33-year-old plainclothes security guard prefers to avoid the limelight. After all, it was his low-profile that helped him catch over 300 thieves in Wangfujing from 1996 to 2005, one of the reasons he won the award.

Two years on, he finds himself in the news again with Yao Ming as Xie now has a chance of becoming a Beijing Games torchbearer, once again donning the mantle of a de facto ambassador for Beijing's hordes of migrant workers.

"I really hope it pans out and I can hold the torch. I want to run for all the migrant workers to build more understanding," he told China Daily.

Beijing's migrant population recently reached 5.1 million, making up a third of the city.

He said model workers, who are usually recommended by their employers, often have to get used to rewriting speeches at award ceremonies.

"A lot of hardworking people deserve this prize," he said. "I am very fortunate and I know the government selected me to represent the migrant workers here."

Humble beginnings

Coming from a village in Shanxi some 400 km southwest of Beijing, Xie is the seventh son and 12th child in a large family.

"No one in our family has ever met a bigger family than ours," Xie said, lying back on his chair.

While most of his friends who grew up in the area now work in some of the thousands of mines scattered around Shanxi, Xie, a former mechanic, never wanted that kind of life.

"I longed to see the outside world," said Xie, who will never forget March 21, 1996 as the day when he arrived in Beijing. He also urges his co-workers to memorize their "D-Day" in the Chinese capital.

"That day was a real turning point for me," he said. "I wanted to make a fresh start and settle here."

Sadly, Xie arrived in Wangfujing to discover that the streets were not exactly paved with gold.

"We found the Wangfujing police station was a very shabby courtyard, even coming from the countryside," he said.

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