1. An active girl in UIBE
Yanhong Li was from Shandong province. She was tall and good at singing for she was born in a family of Lv Opera. After the university entrance examination, she chose Customs Department as her first major. Although she knew nothing about customs at that time, she had been dreaming of wearing uniforms from childhood. What a coincidence!
Life is a little bit hard in UIBE 20 years ago, with mixed-gender dormitories. The seats in dining hall were not enough as well. Sometimes, students had to have meals standing around a table, which had the benefit that students would look at them with envy. Look! Girls in Customs Department were all tall, and even more beautiful wearing customs uniform.
During the four-year college life, Yanhong Li was responsible for managing meal tickets and subsidy for four years. She served as Organization Secretary as well as Minister of Girls Department in the Student Union. She was also the major player in cultural activities, and led Customs Department to win the first place in College Choir Competition. Her skills and artistic talent had been fully displayed in social activities, and led her into another class. In UIBE, where the most outstanding and active young students gathered together, she continued to be inspired and learned from others. This experience had benefited her a lot in her future career. Therefore, she attached great importance to whether a student had joined as an interviewee. She believed that from such social activities she could know the interviewer’s personality and adaptation ability, thus decided whether he or she was suitable for customs work.
2. 20 years after graduation, she was still proud of wearing uniforms
Now, most of her 51 classmates have left customs, and she was the only one still working in Qingdao Customs. However, she was still proud of wearing uniforms. She said: “I’ve been obsessed with customs work. I did change jobs in Qingdao Customs. The more jobs I have changed, the more I learned about customs work, the more challenging I feel. I find that working in customs is very interesting because of keeping learning new things.” As her work progressed, wearing customs did not only make her more beautiful, but brought her occupation confidence.
She has gone through the greatest period in Qingdao. When she first came here, she had to work in the old building, which was a German architecture, also a witness to China’s modern history. With majestic appearance, it was old and shabby inside, with squeaky boards. All staff had to share one toilet. Over the past 20 years, she had already six jobs in Qingdao Customs, and became a witness to history herself.
At the beginning, she worked in the Document Examination Section. At that time, she was one of the few customs major in Qingdao Customs. Although, working in Document Examination Section was pretty boring, consisting mainly of document management. But this work didn’t waste her knowledge learned in college, especially the foreign trade knowledge. Later, she became a part-time teacher in customs staff training, teaching International Trade Affairs and gave play of her advantages as an UIBE graduate.
Next, she successively worked in Import and Processing Trade Section and Airport Customs. Working in Airport Customs enhanced her interpersonal skills – from service awareness, language proficiency, expression ability to her own personality. During this period, she was promoted as Deputy Chief of Section.
After coming back to Qingdao Customs in 1996, she worked in the Inspection Center, which was the last stage of goods management, with greater responsibility and heavy workload. In the position, she was able to improve her reaction capability, coordination skills and business ability.
Then, she changed her job to Fraud Squad, after promoted to Chief of Section in 1977. Compared with the jobs before, she took a back seat to the second line. The main responsibility was to execute audit accounts and check cargo certificate. 13 years after graduation, she accidentally used the accounting knowledge learned in college, including auditing business contracts and payments, which she was very impressed with.
She was transferred to Document Examination Department as Deputy Director, after cultivating interest in audit work. Intensive Document Examination was one of the results of customs system reform. She was a little puzzled that she was more suitable to audit work which required commutation skills, while working in Document Examination Department was really boring. However, later she found this work more challenging for it required integrating skills. The Document Examination Department was directly related to customs passing speed, which caused greater social pressure. This work had high requirement to judgment, psychological quality and commodity knowledge.
Yanhong Li concluded that: “I have experienced lots of different jobs, but I could adapt to every new work thanks to comprehensive training in UIBE, including trade, accounting, law and foreign language. ”
3. Wearing customs uniform, always taking the test of incorruption
For Li, the most memorable thing is what professor Zongyuan Zhang said: “You may fail to see anything behind this work now, but it would not be that easy if you still wear customs uniforms and work in the first line20 years later. ”
Now, two decades later, she thought that what professor Zhang said was quite true. From the perspective of incorruption, working in customs was indeed a high-risk occupation. Some of her classmates also turned to be negative examples.
She said: “How long can we wear this custom uniform? I feel that wearing this uniform requires noble qualities. We cannot only think about how to improve our professional abilities, but how to use our right for people. The uniform is the sign of authority, belonging and constraints. Wearing the uniform, we are different from ordinary people, for every word and action is under the supervision of people. Every custom staff should value and bring honor to the customs uniform. We should understand that people give us this uniform, they can also take it back if we are incompetent.”
Therefore, she suggested that ideological and moral education should be strengthened in college education.
Nowadays, Yanhong Li was invited to her daughter’s school to give a lecture about her job. She had been thinking for a long time, for she hoped to teach kids customs knowledge, and help them set up great ideals when they are young. Her opening words were: “I have been dreaming of wearing uniforms from childhood…”
Now, Yanhong Li serves as the director of Enterprise Department in Qingdao customs.
