1 . In 1943, a jury (评审委员会) of top scholars and scientists elected James Yen one of “the ten greatest revolutionaries of our time”, listing him along with Albert Einstein and Orville Wright. Yet all he did was teaching Chinese farmers to read.

Born in Sichuan in 1890, James Yen graduated from the Yale University in 1918. After this, he went to France to support Chinese workers who had been sent to help the Allies in World War I. Working to help and teach them to read and write letters, Yen realized how much they needed education. Therefore, he wrote a simple literacy (读写能力) book which used only 1000 basic characters. In the 1920s, inspired by his experiences, Yen organized the National Association of Mass Education Movements. Its purpose was to bring literacy to the Chinese masses.

For 4000 years, reading and writing in China was only done by scholars. Everybody knew, including the farmers themselves, that farmers were incapable of learning. That thoroughly deep-seated point of view was James Yen’s first “impossible” challenge to overcome. The second challenge was the Chinese language itself, consisting of many characters, each character having rich meanings. The third challenge was the poor technology and inconvenient transportation. How could James Yen reach the 350 million farmers back then? These were impossible odds, an impossibly huge goal.

Yet he made it and then expanded his goal: teach the rest of the Third World to read. Practical reading programs started pumping out literate people like a gushing oil well in the Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Kenya, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India. People became literate. For the first time in their entire history, they could access the accumulated knowledge of the human race.

What’s the secret of James Yen’s success? He tried to do something that seemed impossible. He worked long hours. And he started with what he had in front of him and gradually took on more and more, little by little.

2 . Growing up in coconut-rich regions in India and with his father working in the related industry, Anees Ahmed heard of coco peat (椰壳泥) at an early age. After completing graduation in bio-technology from college, Ahmed worked as a researcher on agriculture in various places. He recalls that while studying about coco peat, he discovered that many countries used peat moss (泥炭苔) as an ingredient to keep soil rich. The extraction of this material leads to the release of carbon dioxide, which further contributes to global warming.

According to Dutch researchers, coco peat’s water-holding capacity, disease resistance, and renewable nature make it suitable for gardening and agricultural activities. Ahmed realized that coco peat could be a better alternative to peat moss and then started a company, Global Green Coir, in 2012. When Ahmed entered the market there were only few companies using this material as coco peat was not popular among people, and even coco peat was mostly considered as wastes. “At first people and companies used to give us coco peat for free.” he said.

Now Ahmed’s company gets coco peat from coconut shell to make varied products like pots, bricks, blocks, and grow bags that are exported internationally. However, Ahmed’s journey was not without challenges. He was met with doubts at the beginning. He insisted to demonstrate the potential of the material. His efforts paid off and gained recognition slowly at home and abroad. Ten percent of his business comes from India and the rest is from countries like the US, Europe, the Middle East, and more. Anyway, India is a huge market and most people are adapting to such products gradually.

Ahmed and his family made an initial investment of $5,000 to start the business. Now their sales volume of the last five years has been around $6 million. “With increasing focus on organic farming, coco peat will soon gain more popularity. It is estimated that the cos e pest market is expected to reach 5. 26 billion by 2030 from 3. 89 billion in 2023. ” Ahmed said.

3 . Jiang Shumei learned her first Chinese character at the age of 60. Now, the 87-year-old grandmother from Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province is the proud author of six books.

“I wasn’t educated as a child. I never imagined, even in my wildest dreams, that I would publish a book one day,” says the resident of Suihua city. Her books detail the chaos of wartime and the hardship during the famine, and vividly retell anecdotes over the decades.

The elderly woman had her own way of learning. She composed lyrics for songs, and asked children to write them down, so that she could read each character as she sang the songs again and again. Whenever she came across characters she didn’t know on pamphlets (小册子), bus stops, or shop signs, she found someone to ask.

She first put pen to paper in 2012, at the age of 75. It was not easy. Sometimes, completing a single sentence could take a day. As a college teacher and a writer herself, Zhang Ailing, Jiang Shumei’s daughter, gave her mother a lot of encouragement and help. She told her that while writing, she should imagine herself telling stories to an audience, so that they would be easier to understand and be full of interesting details.

Zhang was also her first editor. Every time her mother finished writing something, she would discuss the manuscript (手稿) with her and check it over before typing it on the computer. Zhang began publishing her mother’s stories on social media platforms in 2013. When they drew the attention of her writer friends, the pair made the decision to publish them.

The first book, Time of Trouble, Time of Poverty, was published later that year, and proved to be a success. The book earned Jiang a lot of fans and sympathy. So far, the elderly woman has published six books, totaling more than 600,000 characters in length. In her spare time, she is also learning painting and calligraphy. “I would like to be a writer, a painter and a calligrapher,” she says, adding that her dream now is to have her own art exhibition when she is 90.

4 . Science fiction lovers in China have reasons to feel inspired by Chinese writer Hai Ya, whose book The Space-Time Painter won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette on Oct. 21, 2023.

Hai created the story inspired by a painting masterpiece Qianli Jiangshan Tu by Wang Ximeng from the Song Dynasty, who painted the work at the age of 18. Hai created a painter named Zhao Ximeng, who painted for the emperor more than 1,000 years ago. After much misery and suffering, Zhao abandoned his physical body and entered a space where a modern policeman was investigating a case involving an ancient painting. The story reveals the political struggles behind this extraordinary painting and fights of individuals against the torrents of time. Pitying on Wang who was so talented but had such a short life, Hai extended his life through sci-fi.

Hai has impressed the world most with his work ethics. Rather than being a full-time novelist, Hai treats writing as a part-time activity to be taken up whenever he is not doing his bread-winning job, something that should inspire more young writers. There was a time when not everyone could be a “writer” but now more and more people are pursuing their dreams to become writers.

In fact, Liu Cixin, who won the Hugo Award for The Three-body Problem in 2015, is also a part-time writer, holding an engineering job. He encourages young people to keep their jobs and write if they have dreams.

Their stories go to show that holding a job should not deter people from pursuing their dreams of writing. If there is a story and the will to write it, one can get up early or sleep late to devote around three hours to writing intensively every day. And having a job will actually equip one with enough material to write about, while the salary can guarantee a life, because not every writer makes enough money from writing. The key lies in balancing the eight hours in office every day with three hours of writing in the early morning or late at night. Persistence is the key.

5 . David Chipperfield, the British designer known for his minimalist and inclusive spaces, has won the Pritzker Prize, often called “the Nobel Prize of architecture”. With this honor, he joins the company of groundbreaking designers such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers and Oscar Niemeyer.

Chipperfield has distinguished his works by creating sharp, minimalist socially conscious buildings. The Pritzker committee wrote, “His architectural language balances consistency with the fundamental design principles and flexibility towards the local cultures ...The work of David Chipperfield harmonizes European classicism, the complex nature of Britain and even the delicateness of Japan.”

In 1997, Chipperfield’s firm was chosen to renovate Berlin’s Neues Museum, which was a mess long after being damaged by World War I. Chipperfield approached the project in honor of the building’s history. For more than a decade, he searched through stones and bricks from the   original structure for pieces to use,some of which had bullet (子弹) holes in them.

The architect has applied the same belief to his recent works, including the expansion of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where he renovated galleries, created a new auditorium (礼堂) and built a concrete bridge to connect its original buildings.

“While some architects may use the attention that comes with the Pritzker Prize to go big and advance their commercial ambitions, Chipperfield’s win is unlikely to result in steel-and-glass supertall skyscrapers,” writes Bloomberg’s Kriston Capps.

Instead, Chipperfield says he will work harder to create architecture that has a specific mission.“I regard this award as an encouragement, continuing to direct my attention not only to the substance of architecture and its meaning but also to the contribution that we can make as architects to address the existing challenges of climate change and social inequality,” he says in a statement. He adds,” We must rise to these challenges and help inspire the next generation to shoulder this responsibility with vision and courage.”

6 . Born in Iris Barre l in 1921, Apfel was brought up in Queens, New York. As a daughter of a successful small business owner, she studied art and art history before working as a copywriter for Women’s Wear Daily.

With her husband Carl, Apfel started a textile and fabric (纺织及织物) reproduction business in 1950. Her firm managed White House restoration projects for nine presidents, ranging from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.

Known for her charming personality and deep devotion to work, Apfel became a late-in-life fashion influence r through her unique style — featuring bushels of bracelets (手镯), piles of necklaces, and those unmistakably large, heavy-framed glasses.

Apfel’s star brightened as she aged. At 90, she was teaching at the University of Texas at Austin. At age 94, she was the subject of a well-reviewed documentary by Albert Maysles. At age 97, she became a professional fashion model, represented by a top agency, IMG. She modeled for Vogue Italia, Kate Spade and M. A. C, and at the time of her death, she held the record for being the oldest person to have a Barbie doll crafted in her likeness by Mattel. That year, her autobiography (自传), Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon, was published in 2018.

In a 2015 NPR story, Apfel told a reporter Ina Jaffe that she took pride in having inspired people over the years. She remembered meeting one woman who claimed that Apfe l had changed her life.

“She said ‘I learned that if I don’t have to dress like everybody else, I do not have to think like everybody else’,” the designer recalled with joy. “And I thought, boy, if I could do that for a few people, I achieved something.”

“She became an inspiration for so many people,” jewelry designer Alexis Bittar said in a statement. “Through living her life on her own terms, it messaged to women that they don’t need to hide in the shadows as they age; they actually can continue to glow and get better at what they do and look like.”

8 . Yu Zeling, an award-winning master of paper cutting, fills her studio with cutouts of animals, people, and scenes that are so vivid that they seem to leap from the walls. Her art covers village life in Ansai, a rural district in Shaanxi Province.

Ms. Yu came to paper cutting in the late 1970s as naturally as she breathed the earthy air.“We were very poor, and when it was time to celebrate the New Year, we all put paper-cuts on the windows to decorate our houses,” she says, recalling the holiday at her childhood home. Ms. Yu and others are working to keep the folk art alive, even as it evolves away from its roots as adornment for farmhouses.

The art originated in China in the centuries after paper was invented in A.D.105. Full of auspicious (吉利的) symbols from daily life, the decorations represented good weather, many offspring, long life, wealth, and happiness.

Using newspaper, Ms. Yu first practiced cutting the image of a Chinese national flag that she saw in a school textbook. She cut it 100 times before she was satisfied. Then her aunt took over, introducing her to increasingly complicated traditional themes.

Ms. Yu was later invited to train in the Ansai's Cultural Center. After years of training,Ms.Yu became a master in her own right, winning one award after another. Her works are on display in museums. But she's humble about her achievements. “I was, and still am, a farmer,” she says with a smile.

Hoping to carry on and grow the folk art, Ms. Yu volunteers to teach at free community training sessions. Paper cutting is also taught in Ansai’s public schools. Ms. Yu is aware of the need to go beyond protecting traditions and embrace new paper-cut experiments.

10 . There can be no doubt that Stephen King, New York Time’s Best-Selling author, has found success in many aspects, but it wasn’t always like this. King witnessed tragedy and horrors from the very beginning. When he was 2 years old, his father told his mom that he was going out to get cigarettes but in fact, he never came back, he had abandoned his family.

This left his mother Ruth to care for Stephen and his elder brother David on her own. Ruth was forced to move often, desperately looking for work as she was now the only provider of the family, and she had to rely on relatives most of the time. One day Stephen went out to play with friends and when he came back, he wasn’t even able to speak a single word, it seemed he was hurt mentally or something, but he still got the courage to continue forward. It turned out that one of his friends was hit by a train and died, which left an emotional scar on him.

King, later on, dropped out of school due to some serious health concerns and was told that he had to enlist (入伍) again the next fall, which demotivated him too. Although Stephen King didn’t see his childhood as something extraordinary or special, he did say that he was always fascinated by scary things.

People used to acknowledge the King family by their love of literature, in fact whenever Stephen’s mom used to go out, she didn’t hire a babysitter, for the kids used to read novels to each other so they would not get bored. Stephen King’s love of stories was developed from a very young age and he carried that tradition with his own children along with his wife Tabitha.

In 1973, Stephen King started his amazing journey of success when he published his first novel “Carrie”, which is scary. The rest followed from after that as he published many amazing books like The Shining, IT, Firestarter, and Cujo. All of these books became instant classics and got their own movie and television shows adaptions.