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.