A sense of service

A perfect project

An opportunity knocked in 2017, when Du learned that a dance hall in Xicheng needed to be transformed into a civic cultural center.

"It was a dream project for me," Du says.

The transformation was a public welfare project and fitted his art education background.

So, he and his team of 20 young people immediately began preparing to bid against big State-owned enterprises.

"I knew the only chance I had was to fall back on my previous charity experience and deliver a detailed plan that could really solve the residents' problems," Du says.

He and his team submitted a proposal that was "as thick as a brick" — in sharp contrast to his competitors, whose renovation plans featured a few pages on average.

Du's plan eventually won the hearts of the judges, and he wasted no time turning the 1,860-square-meter space into the Guangnei Street cultural center.

"Our advantage was that we knew many experts in various fields, who we could invite to give lectures," Du says.

He has contacts with more than 100 experts in various fields, most of whom are from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or are professors at institutes of higher learning, including Peking University and the Beijing Normal University. This network is the result of his relentless inquiries about their availabilities and their willingness to talk about their fields.

When local children wanted to watch shadow-puppet plays, he invited Fan Weiguo, a seventh-generation inheritor of Taishan shadow puppetry from Shandong province, to perform. When they expressed curiosity about outer space, he invited Liu Yong, a researcher at the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to give lectures. Du also brought well-known traditional opera actors to perform for elderly residents.

Leading primary schoolteachers and principals also joined forces with the cultural center to offer parents advice about raising children.

As such, Du has come to serve residents of all age groups.