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Li Shuo is accustomed to sleeping in most mornings, but in recent months she has become an early riser and each morning she can be seen working out on the fields of her university campus.
The reason she is exercising is not to lose weight to wear beautiful clothing, but because she will work at the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting to be held in Beijing from Nov 5 through 11.
Li is one of 2,280 volunteers selected from some 8,000 students at 23 Beijing universities to assist participants during the weeklong event.
The second-year postgraduate student at Beijing International Studies University considers her role a major honor. To successfully complete her task, in addition to exercising to build up her stamina for the expected hard work, she has also studied information related to the conference as well as diplomatic manners and etiquette.
"Since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the sincere smile of volunteers has become a calling card for the capital. Their smiles, kind help and hard work are an important part of ensuring the success of major events and activities," said Guo Wenjie, deputy secretary of the Communist Youth League of Beijing.
To ensure their success, the selection and preparation of APEC volunteers began in September.
The selection was very strict and the chosen volunteers were winners of several rounds. They first had to pass selection within their schools and then were interviewed by the organizing committee.
"We were happy to have so many excellent volunteers, and our demands of the volunteers this time are much higher than before. They should all have a very good command of English or other languages, they were required to register with their real names and they all have volunteer experience at previous large-scale events or activities," he said.
"The first batch of volunteers in charge of welcoming and seeing off guests took up their stations on Nov 1 at Beijing Capital International Airport. They performed very well, and we were quite satisfied with their performance," Guo said.
That satisfactory performance was the result of much hard work.
"The selected students are excellent, but enthusiasm and confidence are not enough to be good volunteers. We first organized general training for all of them to study the APEC background and related knowledge. We also invited well-known people, including Yu Minhong, chairman of New Oriental Education & Technology Group, and Bai Yansong, a news commentator at China Central Television, to teach students the skills of languages and good manners to deal with foreign visitors," he said.
Special training in some subjects was also given, such as how to take care of people with disabilities, and diplomatic manners and etiquette, he said.
Zhang Liangsong, director of the International Exchange Center of the Beijing Foreign Affairs Office, said to calm the volunteers' nerves and increase their ability to deal with emergencies, many rehearsals were held with fellow students acting as guests and intentionally encountering problems.
"We also prepared many emergency cases that let students practice, such as inviting staff to pretend to be foreign guests who had just arrived, but their information could not be found on our guestlist and the guest did not know their hotel name or other useful information. Those rehearsals will help the students to calmly handle real problems," he said.
"We have meetings every day at 8 pm where the students gather to review their work for the day and find ways to improve," he added.
"Smiling is also an important part of our training. The perfect smile needs the coordination of the muscles of the face with the cooperation of the eyes and heart. We had special training on smiling, and I practice every day," said Wang Jie, a first-year postgraduate student at Beijing International Studies University.
Wang consulted her notes and said it's not enough to show eight of your teeth when smiling, but your eyes also need to be part of the smile. When you look at people, you need to make sure you are looking gently and in a friendly manner, and using your eyes to measure guests from top to bottom is strongly prohibited, she said.
"I've worked as a volunteer at some big events held in Beijing before and, honestly speaking, volunteering is not easy work. However, I cherish the opportunity and really learned a lot from the training," Wang said.
"The organizing committee invited well-known people from different fields to give lessons and it was a really good opportunity to meet them and learn from them. Besides, to better grasp the training content, volunteers practice together in groups. I've made some good friends and learned a lot from them during that time spent together," she said.
hena@chinadaily.com.cn
