The audience     1     (attract) by 100-year-old Florence Chia-ying Yeh, a famous Chinese poetry scholar, showing at Nankai University on October 15, 2023 during an international symposium (研讨会) on teaching Chinese poetry. She delivered a lecture on Chinese poetry and shared her reasons for making     2     decision to live in Tianjin’s Nankai District.

When Yeh concluded her speech, the audience stood up, applauding her for her tireless efforts     3     (promote) Chinese poetry around the world. “I have devoted myself to teaching and sincerely hope to transmit (传递) the beauty of both the logic and emotion     4     (find) in ancient poetry to the younger generation,” Yeh said. She explained that after teaching in varieties of places outside the Chinese mainland, she     5     (eventual) chose to settle in Nankai University in the 1980s.

During the last three years, Yeh has taught Chinese poetry on social media platforms,     6     (win) widespread appreciation for her dedication. On September 5, 2023, a rebroadcast of one of Yeh’s lectures on Nankai University’s account on a social media platform, was watched by     7     (million) of people.

For 80 years, Yeh has been engaged     8     educating the younger generation about ancient Chinese poetry. She has developed a unique set of teaching methods and concepts     9     are still contributing to China’s     10     (culture) development in the current wave of the wider spreading of Chinese culture.

Jiang Mengnan—an Inspirational Role

Ye Ping,     1     is from the Va ethnic group (佤族) in Yunnan province, led her fellow       2     (village) in growing coffee 12 years ago. For the first eight years, Ye never drank coffee     3     (she). In order to improve the quality of Yunnan coffee, she started studying how to recognize its characteristics and tried to cultivate (培育) it     4     (far), even winning first prize in an industry competition.

“My goal is     5     (let) the world know that China can produce its own good coffee,” she said. In 2018, Ye took part in a training program     6     (organize) by the Yunnan Coffee Exchange and the US-based Coffee Quality Institute. After the course, she gradually learned how to appreciate the unique characteristics of different coffee. In 2011, Ye Ping founded her Tianyu brand of coffee. “It now has more than 200 farmers in its agricultural cooperative (农业合作社),     7    the cultivation area exceeds 134 hectares (亩).” she said.

    8     increasingly advanced planting technologies and higher-quality local coffee beans, her company ships its product to renowned coffee chains such as Starbucks and Manner Coffee,     9     new Shanghai-based chain. The coffee beans produced by Ye     10     (send) to the Security Council of the United Nations as a gift in May 2021.

6 . As a female athlete in 2021, I think about change all the time. I think about how much has changed since I first began skiing, and the boys didn’t think I belonged because I was a girl. Now we ski together and they know I belong.

And I think about how much still needs to change, and how we need to keep pushing the envelope for women athletes to be treated as fairly as the men. And how I can use my voice and my platform to help make that change. I’ve always dreamed big. My mom taught me that from day one. She taught me that the first person to believe in you must be yourself.

The ideas of “good” and “bad”, when it comes to the way you behave or portray yourself, are so subjective (主观的), that if you attempt to conform (顺从) to them, you’ll never fully succeed. I learned that the only way to fit a mold, is to create one for yourself, and that takes courage. And now I want to be a strong female role model for all young girls. To show them what they can accomplish through sport, through skiing. To show them what is possible when you have the courage to dream big, and follow those dreams.

One of my mottos is: “If it were easy, it wouldn’t be a dream.” Adversity (逆境) and possibility of failure are what make life interesting. When I learn a new trick, it’s okay to be scared. It’s okay that I will probably fall a million times before I get it right. It takes courage to be able to fall. But then, you use that courage to your advantage, and you work harder, and practice more, and eventually you land that new trick.

7 . In the early part of his life, Seiichi Sano was a busy business owner. Later in life, he took on other difficult activities. At the age of 80, he climbed Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest mountain. Soon after, he started surfing.

Sano turned 90 this year. After being recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest male to surf, he’s considering trying other activities. “Maybe I’ll try bouldering,” he said, suggesting he might do it first in a gym. “Outside it might be a bit dangerous.”

But maybe he will just stick with what he knows. “I think it would be interesting to surf until I’m 100,” Sano said. “I think I can take better care of myself when I have goals like this. Even now, I take better care of myself than I did before.”

Sano said he got the idea to try surfing from a worker at his local bank. The man’s skin was always dark but healthy. He did not look like a usual banker. His secret, he said, was surfing. So Sano found a teacher.

“I don’t consider myself an old man,” he said in his wet suit, board standing next to him. “I have never thought of myself as an old persona. I always feel that I can still move forward. I can still do it. I can still enjoy it.”

Sano joined hundreds of other surfers recently at Enoshima. All the surfers were younger, of course. Several young students who also worked with Sano’s surf teacher, 46-year-old Kazuto Shimizu, talked about Sano.

“To be honest, I was surprised by his age,” said Shimizu. “I was most worried that he would get injured. I did not know how fit he was, physically.”

Sano still runs a business that supplies wood to building companies. He works 9-to-5 at the job. Surfing reduces tension for him.