Yang Xiaomei, deputy chief of Ximahe Police Station in Kaili City, Guizhou Province, had been awarded a prize of National Excellence for Policepersons in Charge of Household Registration by the Ministry of Public Security for her 23-year-career of outstanding achievements. Yang, a woman from the Dong ethnic group, has worked consistently hard to win the trust of the people in the neighborhood under her administration. Her natural affinity has also helped her carry out job related tasks and communicate with the local community.
As part of her daily inspection routine, Yang Xiaomei writes down all useful information in a notebook which she carries with her everyday. She knows every detail of every event within her administrative region - the No.6 area of responsibility. Where are the security blind spots? What are the measures in place to deal with these blind spots? Where does the new comer live? Which people haven't registered with the local law enforcement agency? How have the people under special administration performed recently? She writers down the answers to all such questions, and commit them to memory. Day by day Yang Xiaomei has gathered detailed information on the 5,200 families in her administrative region and has been referred to as a "walking map" by her colleagues.
A retired worker from the Kaili Department Store, Wang Juping, became emotional when speaking about Yang Xiaomei. "Yang is our dearest sister. We all like to pour out our heart to her and share our times of happiness," said Wang Juping.
Yang assisted poor families in her administrative region that could not afford their children's education fees by asking the schools concerned to ease the costs. Two divorced couples remarried after Yang's continuing efforts to mediate their relationships. In 1998, laid off workers from the Kaili Department Store were concerned about their children's school registration because the Department Store did not take the responsibility of organizing the retrenched worker's residential re-registration at the local police station. This would have hindered their children's applications because only children with legal and valid residential registration can be accepted by schools. Yang went from house to house collecting residential booklets and re-registered all the laid-off workers.
On more than one occasion lost and disenfranchised children were sent to Yang's office. As usual, Yang helped send these children onto schools and welfare organizations. She is currently bringing up a girl whose father was sentenced to prison for theft in Jiangsu Province. The girl, named Kai Yan, had followed her father to Jiangsu, but was later sent back to Kaili City after her father was incarcerated. Yang took the girl home and began looking for her mother, but her mother was nowhere to be found. At that time Kai Yan was twelve years old and had never been enrolled in school. So Yang Xiaomei arranged for the girl to study at preliminary school. Since then, whenever school holidays come around Kai Yan eagerly returns to the Yang home. Yang's daughter teaches her many lessons and the Yang couple take care of her living requirements.
Yang's administrative region covers one of the most problematic areas in Ximahe, with the Kaili Bus Transportation Company situated in and lots of shops encircling the area. Many shop owners rent houses in the region to frequently changing tenants.
Yang immediately understood her duty when she was assigned to the location. She visited every house under her administration in order to gain first-hand information on the local residents, the people under special administration, and transient citizens. She signed a pledge on behalf of the Police Station with landlords in the area. She visited over 1,000 tenants one by one, checking that they had been issued with the appropriate temporary residential cards. In her practical manner, Yang double checked the 104 privately owned shops in the area and more than 500 shop-runners in less than three months, taking photos and creating a set of detailed records. These records have provided police with all kinds of useful knowledge helping them carry out their day-to-day business.
In mid-May, 2002, a family at No.5 Wenhua Beilu was robbed. Yang Xiaomei arrived at the scene later that evening and began inquires with neighborhood residents in an effort to locate clues. With her rich first-hand knowledge of the transient population, the police force was able to seize a gang of burglars. The crime ring later confessed to committing 66 break-and-enter burglaries in the area.
(china.org.cn by James Liu, October 28, 2002)
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