Over 200,000 people have volunteered to work on the COVID-19 battlefield as of March 3, while the whole city of Shanghai is fighting against the epidemic.

(Volunteers at Shanghai’s airports and railway stations)

The volunteers are ordinary people but they have chosen to work in key areas across the city, like communities, road crossings and hospitals. Also, there are some others working online for public education, course tutoring and psychological consulting.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 the official website of Shanghai Volunteer (http://www.volunteer.sh.cn) has so far launched 6,786 voluntary projects. 206,907 volunteers have been recruited with an average service time of 40.48 hours each. In the past month, 55,732 people have registered on the website.

In the large team of volunteers are many expats, who have also stood on the frontline and helped to protect the city.

Mansoor Alam, a 27-year-old young man from Pakistan, has been in China for four years. Shanghai is like his second home, he said. He volunteered to help with body temperature checks at the gates of residential areas and road crossings in Jiading District. “With the virus spreading so fast, all we can do is fight, no matter where we come from.”

(Mansoor Alam helps with body temperature checks at a road crossing)

Volunteers have always had a special place in Chinese culture, as helping others is regarded as a virtue. One of China’s best loved volunteers is Lei Feng, a young soldier held up as a role model in the 1960s for helping others selflessly. The annual Lei Feng Day on March 5 is a reminder for people to help others.