■ Text by Reporter Xing Beilin
Doing everything well for residents step by step to make their lives happier is the core principle of Jing’an Temple Sub-district to promote grassroots social governance deeply. The work of Jing’an Temple Sub-district has always been guided by Party building. On the one hand, it integrates the Party building service resources of the sub-district into the “energy pool” of regional Party building to solve the most practical livelihood problems, including urgent and difficult problems and troubles and those that residents are most concerned about and improve the happiness index. On the other hand, it continuously improves the grid Party construction network to allow everyone in the community to become the participant and manager of community development and to gain stronger senses of gain and belonging.
Consolidating joint governance,
solving the most practical problems
“Common Homeland,” a regional Party building brand launched by Jing’an Temple Sub-district in 2009, has developed into a warm family with 103 joint-contribution boards of directors and six professional committees. From issuing the “concerted services for people’s benefits” project to forming an accurate “project operation chain” with “three lists” — resource list, demand list and project list — as the tool, and then to implementing ten actions on “overall Party building and optimal governance,” the sub-district has always regarded “better transforming the Party building service resources into the energy, warmth and strength of regional Party building work” as an important issue to actively explore and create the “concentric circle” of the Party building by empowering “optimization” and consolidating “energy,” making the regional joint governance a powerful joint force to solve the most practical problems of community residents and bringing goodwill and warmth to them to the maximum range.
In October 2019, Jing’an Temple Sub-district launched the “Medical Care Express” service project with Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, effectively responding to the urgent needs of residents in the district for medical care and health care, and creating an “unlimited health care site” with direct first-class medical resources. The project provides services for the “Happy Elderly Life Home” of the community once or twice a month, inviting experts from various departments of Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University who offer free treatment services to the elderly. The doctors of Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University also render family doctor services for the elderly living in the “Senior Care Home” of Jing’an Temple Community, conducting initial diagnosis and dispensing for the elderly to facilitate the management of their health records.
During the Double Ninth Festival, the “Medical Care Express” Version 2.0 project has upgraded with the “home consultation” service project added in. After learning the specific disease conditions of 12 elderly who had been found having walking troubles in the investigation of the sub-district, Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University took targeted measures and dispatched 11 experts to pair with the elderly, providing medical service at their homes.
Mr. Feng from Lane 483, Yuyuan Road, was the first beneficiary of “home consultation.” In September this year, Mr. Feng fell down at home, and then he was hospitalized for a fracture of the left femur and nailed two steel nails. In this case, he had difficulty going downstairs for a follow-up visit.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Feng, your operation was successful. Be confident and exercise frequently. If so, your leg will be recovered.” Recalling the first visit of Yang Fengjian, the Associate Senior Physician of Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Mr. Feng said excitedly that Dr. Yang’s words after Yang inquired about his medical history and examined the wound assured him.
Mr. Feng’s wife told the reporter that Dr. Yang not only visited their home for a consultation, taught Mr. Feng three rehabilitation movements and required that he exercise every day, but also left him contact information and told him to call and send short messages whenever necessary. “Dr. Yang’s home consultation not only gave us confidence in postoperative recovery but also relieved our anxiety. In the past, it was impossible to let a professional doctor diagnose and treat a patient at home. But now we can enjoy such services, which is a timely help that solved our biggest problem.” Mr. Feng’s wife highly praised the “home consultation” service.
Stimulating self-governance power,building “Common Homeland” together
Brookside Apartment is a historic architecture under protection in Shanghai reputed as “Shanghai’s Signature Building,” where many celebrities such as Fu Quanxiang, Zhou Xuan and Qiao Qi lived before. However, more than 70 households living here today have been plagued by such trivialities as “paying water fees” for decades.
Limited by the building structure, most households had two, three, or even four water meters. However, only one main water meter in the whole apartment was approved by Shanghai Chengtou Water Group Co., Ltd., and 125 small water meters of households were purchased and installed by themselves. Because the construction drawing of the apartment could not be found, it was impossible to change the situation of multiple water meters for one household to only one water meter for one household. Therefore, the water fees of Brookside Apartment were collected by volunteers for decades.
At the home of Wu Yongmei, head of the Party group of the building group, building head Ma Minghua introduced to the reporter the whole process of collecting water fees: The apartment lobby posted a water meter reading announcement every two months, and the households registered the meter readings of their own water meters on a small notebook and put them into the mailboxes of volunteers who were responsible for collecting water fees. After receiving the notebooks, volunteers calculated the specific payment amount according to the meter reading of the main water meter and the population of each household, wrote the payment amount and payment date on the water bill designed by the volunteers, and then put the water bill and the notebook into the mailboxes of households. After receiving the water bill, the households paid the water fee according to the payment date. “The ‘building head and five members’ of the building group, as well as volunteers, worked together to collect the water fees of households, with each responsible for several floors.” Ma told the reporter that although the work was tedious, they kept doing it without complaint, considering affairs of the building group as their own.
At the beginning of 2021, Wu contacted the Huashan Neighborhood Committee again to express the strong will of households living in the Brookside Apartment on “separate installation of water meters.” After several times of communication and negotiations, the Committee successfully held the “tripartite consultative meeting” of household representatives, property management company and water company. After an on-site investigating of the actual situation of several house structures, the water company finally decided to maintain the current situation of multiple water meters for one household and asked the property management company to replace existing water meters of households with water meters approved by the water company. After all water meters were replaced, the water company sent personnel to read the water meters door to door, and the households paid water fees by themselves after receiving the water bills.
After hearing this good news, the “building head and five members” of the building group, as well as volunteers, separately informed households, collected their property ownership certificates, the copies of ID cards and charged RMB 250 per water meter as the material cost. During the process, some households raised objections and even refused to cooperate. As the “separate installation of water meters” was a systematic project that must be agreed upon by all households of the building before installation, the “building head and five members” of the building group, including Ma Minghua, as well as volunteers, tried to persuade households multiple times door to door to solve the problem. When facing problems that could not be solved, they gave feedback to the neighborhood committee to discuss countermeasures together.
At the end of June this year, reading 125 water meters of Brookside Apartment in apartments have been realized, and volunteers do not need to collect water fees anymore. Wang Jing, secretary of the General Party Branch of Huashan Residential Area, said that the realization of “separate installation of water meters” of Brookside Apartment is a vivid example showing that the micro-units governance of the community is effectively activated by the sub-district grid Party building network and people’s livelihood requirements are satisfied through the Party building guidance, residents’ self-governance, and collaborative governance.
Wang told us, “‘Separate installation of water meters’ is not something rare.” In recent years, the three-level Party building organization network and governance platform composed of the General Party Branch, the Grid Party Branch and the Party Branch of the building group of Huashan Residential Area have solved various community problems such as random charging of electro mobiles, mailbox transformation, ramp transformation and unused items blocking building passageways through “four actions guided by Party building.” The “Common Homeland” Party branch of the building group acts as the organizer, promoter and coordinator in solving the endogenous problems of the building in an open, transparent “sunlight mode,” under the principle that the Party members know, discuss and act first.
Recently, a resident’s behavior of feeding stray cats caused the gathering of stray cats, deteriorating the environment of the apartment garden. Therefore, the volunteers consulted and then decided to add “no stray cat feeding” to the Convention of Residents. After listening to all opinions of residents and communicating and reaching a consensus face to face with the residents feeding cats, the content that “in order to keep the garden clean and tidy, please do not feed stray cats in Brookside Garden, and raise domestic cats at home” has become Article 6 of the Convention.
The reporter learned from Jing’an Temple Sub-district that in recent years, the sub-district has explored breaking the closed block structure of grassroots to realize the grid Party building. Specifically, the sub-district has taken the sub-district Party Working Committee as the “origin,” further extended to the grassroots according to the structure of the General Party Branch, the Party Branch and the Party group of the residential area and built a “1 11 37 388” four-level grid, making it possible for Party organs to penetrate community governance led by Party building into the whole community like “capillaries.” Relying on the Party Building Grid, the majority of Party members can give full play to the principal role of participants and builders of community governance and do it more flexibly and promote the grassroots Party building in a deeper and warmer way.