Reform helps tourism sector spread its wings

Passport police: Zhang Liqun

"In 1988 when I joined the police bureau, no more than 300 residents in the city applied for passports to travel overseas (destinations such as Hong Kong and Macau), and only about 100 required passports for foreign destinations," said Zhang Liqun, a retired police officer from Xuancheng, Anhui province, whose duties included issuing passports.

The 61-year-old said that though the number of applicants was quite small, she and her colleagues were under great pressure.

"The information on passports had to be handwritten, and even the slightest mistake such as misspellings of the applicant's name, birth date or destination would invalidate the document," she said, adding that in the early 1990s, the application procedure was complicated and time-consuming.

"It required dozens of papers including an ID card, household registration forms, assessments of the applicant's work performance by his company, and the police also visited the applicant's home to assess their family and social relationships."

She added that in the late 1980s it usually took about two months to complete the whole process and issue passports to applicants.

"In 1992, I was impressed when a 30-something pregnant woman, whose boyfriend was in Italy, begged us to issue her passport in a very short time because she wanted him to be present at the birth," Zhang recalled.

"But we didn't offer premium processing services back then, so we reported the case to the provincial-level bureau to ask if we could make things more convenient for her. We helped her to get a passport within a month, and were touched that she wept when she received it."

In 1994, Zhang's workload was reduced by the introduction of printed passports, and in 2012, the application process was reduced to about 15 working days.

"Now it only takes about seven working days to get a passport. And people don't have to fill in dozens of forms, they just have to show their ID card," she said, adding that she applied for a passport last month and plans to spend Spring Festival with her son's family in New Zealand.

"I've issued passports to people for 30 years, now it's my turn to get one," she said.