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, Li Yingxue reports.

Chen Wen-cheng (first from right, front row) attends the mass parade in Beijing on Oct 1,2019, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Chen Wen-cheng 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 Changhua, 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.

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The work also allowed me to get to know more of my neighbors, which makes the whole community feel like a big family

Chen Wen-cheng, 31, a Taiwan postdoctoral student at Peking University, speaking about his volunteer work in his community during the COVID19 outbreak

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 Feb 4, 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.

"The deliveries were heavy, and that's why the community needed us younger people to help," Chen says.

His shift at the community entrance was from 8 pm to 10 pm, two to four times a week. Chen remembers on one cold night an elderly volunteer joined him. "I was touched that the septuagenarian was doing volunteer work together with me," he recalls.

Some residents complained about the strict rules for entering the community, and Chen would explain patiently, meanwhile still sticking to the rules and the checking procedure.

"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."

Chen's volunteer work finished when his wife gave birth and he's been adapting to the new role of being a dad.

Both volunteering and parenting didn't stop Chen's other passion－serving as a bridge between young people across the Straits.

During the pandemic, he has organized several online sessions for students from Taiwan who plan to apply to universities or for jobs on the Chinese mainland, sharing experiences, answering questions and offering suggestions.

For the students who are graduating from universities in Beijing but couldn't come back to gather their belongings due to the pandemic, Chen helped to pack and post their luggage to Taiwan.

An eye-opener with a ride

Chen's link with the capital dates back to 2009, when he was a junior student at a university in Changhua.

During that summer, Chen joined college students from the Chinese mainland on a bike-riding tour around Taiwan. In nine days and eight nights, he completed about 1,000 kilometers together with a dozen students.

"I met tutors and students from Peking University, and we soon became friends," Chen recalls.

The trip dispelled many of his stereotypical ideas about people from the Chinese mainland.

"I was so impressed by their logical and detailed thinking when we were playing games, such as The Werewolves of Millers Hollow," Chen says.

That event left such a pleasant impression that he gave up an offer to further his study in Taiwan upon graduation in 2011, and chose to move to Beijing to pursue a master's degree at Beijing Sport University, majoring in sports humanistic sociology.

"I remember when my family saw me off at Taoyuan International Airport, they were worried because it was the first time－and the farthest－that I had moved away from my hometown," he says.

He checks the temperature of a person entering his community, where he worked as a volunteer between February and June, during the COVID-19 outbreak. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Despite the dry climate in northern China, Chen soon got used to life in Beijing. As well as his studies, he volunteered to arrange exchange events for students across the Straits.

That volunteer work continued as he studied for his doctoral degree and his role has gradually evolved from staff member to chief organizer.

In 2015, Chen went back to Taiwan to do his military service after the first year of his doctoral study and returned a year later. During his service his main work was to help organize sports competitions for students in Taiwan.

In March 2019, Chen founded Wanwan Family, an organization for young people from Taiwan in the Haidian district of Beijing, aiming to build a cross-Straits exchange platform. He also founded a similar organization in Taiwan, to help invite the local students to attend the exchange programs on the Chinese mainland.

In-person field trips

For those Taiwan students who have never been to the Chinese mainland, Chen often invites them to come to visit major cities and communicate in person with local students.

In Beijing, there are more than 2,000 students from Taiwan, according to Chen. He regularly organizes in-depth tours to other cities so they can get a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the Chinese mainland.

"I take them to visit some local companies so that they can learn what kind of job to expect if they want to stay on the mainland after graduation," Chen says.

In 2018, he organized a visit to Tencent's Beijing office and his team is currently planning to organize an online job fair for Taiwan graduates studying on the Chinese mainland. Last year, he organized a visit to the Beijing Business Incubation Park for University Students.

Chen Jui-chin, 24, a master's student at the department of sociology, Peking University, is a colleague of his at Wanwan Family. Having known him for five years, she was impressed by his willingness to help people.

"When we host an event, from the discussion and the design of each step before it, to the execution, he participates in the whole process to make sure the activity goes smoothly," Chen Jui-chin says.

"He is so dedicated to helping the many students here from Taiwan," she says. "He also regularly lists all the problems or difficulties that the students have encountered or experienced while studying or living on the mainland and submits them to the authorities."

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In his mind, sports events are always an easy bridge for young people to engage in and break the ice to get familiar with each other. From 2017 to 2019, Chen Wencheng organized curling matches, inviting high schoolers and college students from Taiwan to play and compete with their counterparts in Beijing.

Chen Wen-cheng hopes to organize more sports competitions between participants from both sides of the Straits.

Watching the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on TV, he never thought that one day he would be part of an Olympics. On Dec 5, when volunteer applications opened for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, he applied and was successful.

"I want to encourage more young people in Taiwan to apply as a volunteer for the 2022 Winter Olympics," he says.

"Also as a volunteer, I hope to get a better understanding of how the Olympic Games is run and offer my help based on my previous experience."

Contact the writer at liyingxue@chinadaily.com.cn