PU Huiwen said that what she had learned in the past five years working in the Suicheng neighbourhood committee of a residential area in Pudong surpassed the total knowledge she obtained during the previous 20 years of her life.

As head of a committee that has contacts with 2,700 households in the region, she has to deal with various kinds of people, such as the mentally disturbed, lonely elders or socially-disruptive youngsters.

It was hard for Pu to detail the work of a neighbourhood committee. She said they were "autonomous" organizations set up by local residents. Their task was to help solve any problems these residents might encounter in their daily lives.

However, the committees are not self-governing in a real sense. Members working for the committee can be divided into two types: the formal staff that work there every day are employed by the government, including the head assigned by the sub-district office, and the volunteers (or resident representatives) who themselves live in the area and selected by the other residents.

The election of volunteers is carried out every three years. Each block of apartments first chooses a candidate, with the final number of representatives depending on the number of lanes the neighbourhood has.

However, Song Xiaopeng, 32, a local resident said he barely knew where the committee in his neighbourhood was located and he has little opportunity to contact it.

"We do have more contacts with older people who spend more time at home," Pu said.

At the monthly meeting between staff and representatives, the committee learns what the residents' major problems are, discussing how best to solve them and in what time frame. Problems may involve various aspects of daily life, such as the sanitation in the public areas of the neighbourhood, collecting fees for various public facilities and giving residents leaflets containing tips on how to avoid theft.

The committee also acts as a "good listener" and mediator in family or neighbour conflicts.

"It's usual for a woman who has just quarreled with her daughter-in-law or one who is about to divorce to come to the committee to pour out their troubles," she said.

Pu and the other 11 staff of the committee have to take care of the elderly residents living alone, accompanying them to hospital when they fall ill. They also try to persuade teenagers to refrain from killing time in Internet bars.

Another role of the committee is to oversee order in the residential areas under special circumstances. During the SARS outbreak in 2003, the committee staff asked residents who had been in contact with SARS cases or who had visited areas where SARS was active to stay at home for a month, then they brought food for them every day.

The staff are busy every day from 8 am to 5 pm and they don't have holidays, even during the Spring Festival.

The sub-district office disburses funds, which came from the taxation of stores and companies located in that district, to the committees.

"We may belong to the richest sub-district office in the country thanks to the densely assembled banks and foreign companies in the Lujiazui area," Pu noted.

The committee is proud of a school that it set up for elderly residents, where the faculty are retired teachers offering voluntary service.

"We still don't have enough funding for the school. We get 1,500 yuan (US$181) for it per year," Pu said.