VIGIL AUNTIES
BY JULIA ZHOU (周钰)
【期刊名称】《汉语世界：英文版》 【年(卷),期】2018(000)005 【总页数】5
【关键词】社区委员会; 发展现状; 社区工作; 中国
Long the exclusive domain of elderly gossips, neighborhood committees are looking to recruit new blood—but can they offer what millennials need?
居委会需要新鲜血液，可是这看似平淡的工作能吸引想法各异的年轻人吗？ “
Everyone who comes to the neighborhood committee has their own story,” says Ms. Song, as she updates her local committee’s Weibo account.
Many people view neighborhood committees (juweihui) like Song’s as the preserve of the old, the middle aged, and the idle. “When I took the recruitment exam, I thought so too,”Song admits. Instead, other than the senior management, many of her coworkers are members of the “post-80s and 90s generation,” as millennials are known in China. And the recruitment exam is no mere formality, either. Along with the written exam—which includes questions on Marxism, “Party building,” and Chinese society, as well as a written essay—there is a physical exam
and interview to pass, on top of management and people skills to master.
“My essay question was to write about role models,” Song recalls.“I wrote about my grandma, who was warmhearted and helpful to her neighbors. At that time, I didn’t think I could pass the exam…I certainly didn’t think that the work of the neighborhood committee would be so complicated.”
Formalized at the PRC’s first National People’s Congress in 1954,the juweihui and its rural counterpart,the village committee (cunweihui),are officially the most basic level of China’s government, acting as the“the bridge between the Party and the government and the people.” As stipulated by the 1982 Constitution,they are headed by locally elected representatives and are responsible for “public and charitable services,mediating civil disputes, assisting public security, and reporting the needs and suggestions of the public to the people’s government.” According to Beijing Party Secretary Peng Zhen, these committees were essential for creating a socialist state.“Chairman Mao once told me, ‘All kinds of people in the city ought to be organized,’” he reminisced to the media in the 1980s.
At the time, public services were divided between independent bodies like
“relief
commissions,”
“antiburglary
associations,”
and
workers’unions. Not only did the juweihui provide more centralized
services,but also supposedly more democratic elements than feudal “neighborhood watch” systems. Briefly replaced by“revolutionary committees” during the Cultural Revolution, juweihui returned during the reform era, but found their influence limited. No longer organizing Maoist masses, they were derisively nicknamed “CEOs of the Alley” by youngsters. However,increasing urbanization means that the juweihui still have an important role to play—they now maintain watch over a“grid” security system used in about 60 percent of cities, according to Nankai University’s Zhou Wang.
The work of juweihui is perhaps most interesting when it borders on the invasive. “I’m mainly in charge of family planning, but in fact, that is only a small part of what I actually do,”claims Mrs. Hu, a talkative member of the Wulong Residents Committee. Her duties include everything from keeping tabs on childbirth to visiting the family of an only child who’s been in an accident—all while keeping everyone up-to-date on the latest adjustments to the family-planning and population policy.
“I’ve heard it’s an easy job,” one Beijing resident told China Daily in 2010. “All they do is stamp documents and collect fines.” Indeed, many juweihui tasks involve easing the burdens of everyday bureaucracy.Chinese institutions require that even the most routine requests be written down, signed, and stamped—whether it’s assuring
a local industrial and commercial bureau that a new business will not create disturbance;acknowledging to a court that its subpoena has been delivered; or authenticating compensation claims after someone accidentally put their cash in the laundry.
Downtimes, says Mrs. Hu, are“very idle, busy times are very busy.”Although the work is often tedious,it can sometimes be rewarding—especially when it involves, for example, helping disabled residents put up celebratory couplets to mark special occasions, or helping illiterate residents fill out forms. On any given day, a member of juweihui may be tasked with tearing down flyposters, erasing graffiti, promoting better sanitation, organizing classes for seniors, tackling a troublesome resident, keeping a look out for criminals, or dealing with the aftermath of a major weather event.
As juweihui lack the legal powers of law enforcement, they are not always able to assist with the issues that they are assigned to solve—a problem rarely appreciated by residents already exhausted with the bureaucratic gauntlet. Some can get angry, even abusive. Hu sometimes compares her responsibilities to being a surgeon on the television series Grey’s Anatomy:“The charm of this work is that,every day, we come into contact with different departments when [there’s a problem with] the heating supply, or an illegal building extension; [or] the roof is leaking, or no one is sweeping up the trash.” On the other hand, this
means coordinating actions between different parties, who may be hostile to the idea of taking responsibility. “In fact, I often don’t even know which department I should appeal to,” says Hu. Some
older
residents
compare
younger
bureaucrats
to
“universitystudent village officials,” referring to the university recruits who work on “the frontline of grassroot-level”politics in rural areas. But this is not an analogy that carries much weight with Mr. Zhang, a former juweihui member,who says the two jobs have little in common. In the countryside, Zhang stipulates,grassroots officials can lease land, help fellow villagers with entrepreneurial schemes, and generally achieve a sense of accomplishment that committee work can hardly measure up to. “A good juweihui will…share experiences and receive various evaluations, but there are few material rewards,”young Zhang complains. The pettiness of neighborhood politics, complicated by homeowners’ associations and commercial property managers,is another headache for juweihui workers. “Why was he assigned to that task? Why is this person in that position? And why was the work pushed on me?” he recalled. “There’s a lot of explaining to do and in the end, no one understands.”
Zhang is not alone in his job dissatisfaction: Research surveys conducted by the author among 200 full-time employees in 36 neighborhood committees in the coastal city of Hangzhou found that
VIGIL AUNTIES
