Residents pitch in to burnish coastal city's clean reputation

It was 7 o'clock in the morning. Peng Zuxun, 82, a resident of Qinhuangdao's Greatwall Garden community, left home to start his day, with a scraping tool in his pocket as usual.

At 9 o'clock, Zhou Huixia, director of the Tianyang Xincheng neighborhood committee, which covers several adjacent communities, saw a picture posted in a WeChat group showing small advertisements put up on the wall on the way to the Greatwall Garden. The photo was taken the day before.

"Peng must have cleared it by now," Zhou said.