Stephen Roper

    JUST recently a colleague and I attended an English training ceremony at our local Bao’an police station. I’m still not quite sure why our presence was sought — we gave impromptu speeches about our experiences living in Bao’an — but I’m glad it was because the ceremony revealed the hard work that is being done in Shenzhen to guarantee a successful Universiade.

    Much has been made about the city’s dramatic undertaking to remodel and revamp itself prior to her first major international sports event: the extended subway lines, the efforts to spot and correct English signs, and the magnificent new stadiums being built specifically for the Universiade’s events.

    All of this is important work, to be sure, but what I witnessed at my local police station last week gave me more confidence in this city’s ability to handle an event as significant as the Universiade than anything else.

    Picture, if you will, your favorite restaurant. Now think about the decor of the place, the service, the plates they serve their food on, the cups you drink from, the utensils you use to eat and, of course, the food. Obviously, everything just mentioned is important to your dining experience but it’s ultimately one thing — the food — that makes or breaks a restaurant.

    Let’s take my favorite-restaurant-diatribe and apply it to Shenzhen. The city’s new stadiums and remodeling projects are the proverbial decor. The improved English signs can be compared to the service. All the new Metros, buses, and taxis —we’ll say — are the plates, forks, and cups. But what makes a city, what gives it its soul and identity, is its people, and it’s encouraging to see Shenzhen’s police taking great lengths to better express that spirit through the lingua franca of English.

    Even more impressive than the myriad of techniques used to learn English was the sentiment that there was still more work to be done. Despite the fact that every officer was capable of holding a conversation close to fluency, a desire to continue working, to improve their English even more pervaded throughout the meeting.

    So consistent, so earnest was that notion expressed that I left the ceremony thinking Shenzhen was already prepared for hosting the Universiade. The zeal and pride displayed by the police I talked to — again, in English — left little doubt that this city’s spirit will be well represented when she opens her doors to the world.

    (The author is a former U.S. journalist who is teaching English in Shenzhen.)