——the volunteers for the Cherry Blossom Festival
This is an ordinary volunteer working day of Li Shaoqing, one of the passionate volunteers for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Li gets up at 6:30 AM sharp, washes up quickly and grooms herself carefully before going out. After that, she leaves for Cherry Blossom Boulevard where she works at the first faint rays of the dawn.
Volunteers work on a 5-hour shift from 7:30 AM to 12:30 PM and from 12:30 PM to 5:30 PM. They are required to report for duty at the Volunteer HUB at Kunpeng Square before 7:15 AM to guarantee they are all on site when the visitors rush in the campus.
After a quick check in at the Volunteer HUB and exchanging a few simple greetings with other volunteers, Shaoqing puts on a red cap and a work ID card, then starts another volunteer day. The red caps and work ID cards identify them as volunteers.
Li Shaoqing in the interview
Their duty consists of two parts: security patrolling and cherry tree protection. Today Shaoqing is assigned to the cherry tree protection team whose main task is to stop all the uncivilized acts and dissuade them in polite ways: no climbing the trees, no snapping branches, no plucking flowers or treading on the grass. They also voluntarily make dozens of warning signs to remind the rules to the visitors. Shaoqing stands along the warning line with other volunteers to keep the visitors out of the steep and dangerous areas. Besides, they also act as tour guides: leading the visitors, introducing the history of the blossoms and helping visitors take pictures to keep their beautiful memories and spectacular scenery of the blossom season at WHU. Even during rain, most of them still stick to their posts like little angles wearing red caps, guarding the cherry trees.
Volunteers with warning signs
The regular work for the security patrolling team is to assist the Campus Security Force to facilitate the flow of visitors, prevent jams and handle emergencies when necessary. Although WHU restricts the number of visitors per day, there are still huge crowds of people strolling through the campus. The number of visitors crushing into the campus reaches forty thousand per day at most. Yingding is the hottest spot on the Cherry Blossom Boulevard, since it is the very top of WHU and provides panoramic views of the flamboyant scenery at the campus. All the steep staircases between Yingding and the Cherry Blossom Boulevard bear pointers with upward or downward direction to prevent stampedes. Volunteers are supposed to stop the visitors going the opposite direction and keep the normal order. At the end of the day, some of them even lose their voices from unavoidably speaking at the top of their voices from time to time. Besides, they hand back lost wallets to the owners but refuse receiving anything in return of their favor. This year, in a single day, they helped three pairs of parents find their children lost in the crowd. Although security patrolling is really a rough and demanding work, the smile of satisfaction and happiness on their face never fades away.
A volunteer is answering the questions from a visitor
“I volunteer purely out of my love for the campus. WHU has nurtured me for three years and I want to devote something back to my dear Alma Mater. I also made a lot of like-minded friends through the volunteer work. ”said Xiao Xinyi, the leader of the Volunteer Group for the Cherry Blossom Festival.
“I consider my volunteerism as a kind of cherry blossom complex. Even if I wasn’t a volunteer, I would do what a WHUer should do to make our university better. Otherwise, the volunteer experience does enrich my lives and brings me spiritual wealth.” said Xie Haoran, the main leader of the Cherry Tree Protection Team.
Volunteers working in the rain
(Edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)
