(Gu Ye is welcomed by his family after returning to Shanghai from Cyprus.)

As a Fuxing bullet train pulls in at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, a young man tidies up himself, puts on his blue beret and gets ready to step off the train. Though he is still overcoming the time lap, the excitement of going home suddenly cheers him up. However, the days and nights in Cyprus still linger in his mind. He is Gu Ye, a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus.

(Gu Ye at work in Cyprus)

Cyprus, an island country, is located at the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea and in a strategic position connecting three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. After conflicts broke out in the 1960s and 1970s, the United Nations set up a buffer zone in the country to maintain peace. On January 15, 2017, Gu Ye was dispatched by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security to Cyprus for a one-year peacekeeping mission with the Chinese peacekeeper police force.

As the only Chinese dispatched to work at the UN Police Station in Pyla, a small town near the UN buffer zone in Cyprus, Gu was responsible for border management, refugee assistance, community-oriented policing and patrolling inside the buffer zone.

Stretching 180 kilometers, the buffer zone has a complex terrain with rugged roads which are only two or three meters wide in the narrowest part.“If you drive a truck, the walls on both sides will be crashed,” recalls Gu Ye with a smile. What’s worse, insects and snakes are rampant in the sparsely populated area. Just before Gu was deployed there, a local woman got bitten by a poisonous snake due to unauthorized access. As a result, snake control became one of the duties of the UN police on their patrol.

(Gu Ye is a friend of many locals in Cyprus.)

The first thing after Gu arrived in Pyla was learning the local language. He tried to get closer to the local residents by greeting them in their language. As a Shanghai native, he also used some “Chinese wisdom,” like cooking for foreign colleagues and giving Shanghai’s specialties like White Rabbit milk candy as gifts to the locals. He also taught local kids Mandarin. That was how China Gu became a familiar name to people in Pyla.

During his mission in Cyprus, Gu was most concerned about his family, especially his daughter. He had no time with her even on holidays. It was his wife who took care of their daughter’s life and studies. But Gu never regretted, “The last things we peacekeeping police want are conflicts and wars. May there be peace in the world and no wars!”