3 . Maya Lin, designer and sculptor, has created some of the most iconic works and spaces with the belief that art can address important issues. Her latest projects are no different, from museums to sculptures for Presidential centers.

Lin, 62, grew up in Ohio, the daughter of college professors who were Chinese immigrants. As a 21-year-old student at Yale University, she gained national prominence when her entry won a design competition for the new Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her winning design — two black granite (花岗岩) walls engraved with the names of US service members who died in the Vietnam War (1954-1975) or remain missing — is considered one of the most influential in modern architecture.

Lin went on to design the 1989 Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and dozens of other projects globally, all with social and environmental justice in mind. She told The Wall Street Journal she uses facts in her art. She said, “I am going to present you with what the story is, but I am not going to draw the conclusion for you.” Currently underway is Lin’s plan for the new Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. Lin said she wants it to be a celebration of Chinese American stories and contributions to the country.

Lin is also designing a sculpture to honor former President Barack Obama’s mother, who died in 1995, at the Obama Presidential Center in Illinois. When Obama awarded Lin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, he called her work “physical acts of poetry, each reminding us that the most important element in art or architecture is human emotion.”

4 . With 11 foreign languages under her belt, 68-year-old villager-turned tour guide Xu Xiuzhen has become a celebrity in the town of Yangshuo.

Xu was born in a poor family at the base of Moon Hill. In the late 1970s, Yangshuo became one of the country’s first tourist destinations to welcome foreign visitors after China’s reform and opening up in 1978. “I began to see more foreign faces near Mt. Moon, and locals who spoke some English sold more bottled water than me,” said Xu. “No English, no money.” With the influx of foreign guests in Yangshuo, a large number of villagers sought opportunities to learn English given the booming tourism market. Xu eagerly joined the craze. At that time, she made a living on farming and occasionally sold bottled water to tourists near Mt. Moon.

Over the past 16 years, Xu never stops learning and has taught herself 11 foreign languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. But the polyglot farmer’s success has been hard-won. She started learning simple English phrases 16 years ago. “I used Pinyin to memorize the pronunciation of English words, but my strong southern accent made it quite difficult to understand,” said Xu. So, “I turned to foreign visitors for help, and I always appreciate their feedback because they have helped me correct my word choices and pronunciation.”

Not content to simply serve as a tour guide, she now owns a popular restaurant and operates a reputable hotel. Huang Yongzhong, director of Yangshuo’s tourism bureau, said Xu’s success has encouraged many farmers to follow suit. He added that the government supports local tour guides by providing frequent training on the laws and regulations of the tourism industry. Farmers in Yangshuo are passionate, sincere and hard-working, and this spirit will lead to more success stories like that of her, he said.

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7 . Yuan Longping, known as the “father of hybrid rice”, was one of China’s most famous scientists. Yet, he considered himself a farmer because he continually worked the land in his research. Indeed, his slim but strong body was just like that of millions of Chinese farmers, to whom he had devoted his life.

Yuan Longping was born in 1930 in Beijing. His parents wanted him to pursue a career in science or medicine. However, what concerned him most was that farmers often had poor harvests and sometimes even had a serious shortage of food to eat. To tackle this crisis, he chose to study agriculture and received an education at Southwest Agricultural College in Chongqing.

After graduating in 1953, he worked as a researcher. Yuan Longping realized that larger fields were not the solution. Instead, farmers needed to boost yields in the fields they had. How this could be done was a challenging question at the time. Yuan was convinced that the answer could be found in the creation of hybrid rice. A hybrid is a cross between two or more varieties of a species. One characteristic of hybrids is that they usually attain a higher yield than conventional crops. However, whether it was possible to develop a hybrid of self-pollinating plants such as rice was a matter of great debate. The common assumption then was that it could not be done. Through intense effort, Yuan overcame enormous technical difficulties to develop the first hybrid rice that could be used for farming in 1974. This hybrid enabled farmers to expand their output greatly.

Today, it is estimated that about 60 percent of domestic rice consumption in China is comprised of crops generated from Yuan’s hybrid strains, and his strains have allowed China’s farmers to produce around 200 million tons of rice per year. Yuan’s innovation has helped feed not just China, but many other countries that depend on rice as well, such as India and Vietnam. Because of his invaluable contributions, Yuan Longping received numerous awards both in China and abroad.

Given that Yuan’s hybrids made him quite wealthy, one might think he would have retired to a life of leisure. However, this is far from the case. Deep down, Yuan was still very much a farmer at heart. As a man of the soil, he cared little for celebrity or money. Instead, he made large donations to support agricultural research.

What impressed people most about Yuan Longping was his ongoing ability to fulfil his dreams. Long ago, he envisioned rice plants as tall as sorghum, with each ear of rice as big as a broom, and each grain of rice as huge as a peanut. He succeeded in producing a kind of rice that could feed more people at home and abroad. His later vision for “seawater rice” also became a reality, and potentially opened up nearly one million square kilometers of salty land in China for rice production. Even in his later years, Yuan Longping was still young at heart and full of vision, and everyone was always excited to see what he would dream up next.

8 . After learning about these famous women, you’ll know you can do a lot for society no matter what. You don’t need to be in a specific field, time or environment to make a difference to the world in your lifetime.

Amelia Earhart (1897－1937)

Amelia Earhart was the first woman who ever flew alone across the Atlantic in 1932. She became the first woman pilot in 1935 after flying from Hawaii to California. She began her lifelong dream of flying across the world in 1937. However, her flight went missing on that trip and she was never seen again.

Helena Rubinstein (1870－1965)

Helena Rubinstein moved to Australia in 1902 without the ability to speak English. Later, she founded one of the world’s first cosmetic (化妆品) companies after mixing lanolin, which is an oil that comes from sheep’s wool, with flowers. Because of that, she became the world’s richest woman at the time.

Katharine Hepburn (1907－2003)

Katharine Hepburn was known for playing strong­willed women in her films. She won four Academy Awards for Best Actress, the most an actress has ever won. Her new dress style made wearing trousers acceptable to women, which wasn’t allowed at that time.

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858－1928)

Emmeline was an influential woman activist, who helped British women  get the right to vote. She fought along with her husband for the rights of women all the time in the late 19th century and early 20th century. After she lost her husband, she teamed up with her three daughters and formed The Women Social and Political Union, which was best known as the suffragettes (women’s right to vote).

9 . Five years ago, Chinese skater Wu Dajing introduced himself to the skating world by winning a silver medal at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games. At Pyeong Chang Olympics, Wu not only returned, but also made history.

On Feb 22th, 2018, Wu won the gold medal in the men’s short-track 500-metre race. He set a new world record with a time of 39.584 seconds. He also became the first Chinese man to take home an Olympic short-track gold medal. BBC said Wu’s win was “flawless”, because he was much faster than all of the other skaters.

“I didn’t give them a chance and I kept my speed from the start,” he told the media after the match.

But China’s short-track teams didn’t do well in general at the Games. Chinese skaters in the women’s 500 metres, 3000-metre relay and men’s 1500 metres all failed to take home the gold. Wu was China’s biggest hope, which put a lot of pressure on him. But he proved himself with his great performance.

Wu is now known as a highly talented skater. But things were not always that way. When Wu joined the national team in 2010, he was seen as almost “nothing” compared to gifted skaters like Zhou Yang and Fan Kexin, as his coaches said at the time. Their comments made him quite upset. But as the saying goes. “Winners never quit (放弃) and quitters never win”. Wu didn’t want to give up and worked as hard as he could. He practiced skating all year round. He even didn’t return to his hometown for the holidays for 10 years. “I believe in myself.” he told the media after his match at the Olympics.

10 . Helen Thayer, one of the greatest explorers of the 20th century, loves challenges. She says, “I like to see what’s on the other side of the hill.” She has gone almost everywhere to do that.

In 1988, at the age of 50, she became the first woman to travel alone to the North Pole. She pulled her own sled piled with 160 pounds of supplies, and during her trip no one brought her fresh supplies. Accompanied only by her dog Charlie, she survived cold weather and meetings with polar bears. In fact, Charlie saved her life when one of them attacked her. Near the end of her trip, a forceful wind blew away the majority of her supplies. The last week of the trip, she survived on a handful of nuts and a little water each day.

Helen goes to challenging places not only for adventure, but also for education. Before her Arctic journey, she started a website called Adventure Classroom. On the site, she shares her adventures in order to motivate (激发) students. She explains, “Although kids often see the world in a negative way, without hope for their future, we work to inspire them to set goals, plan for success and never give up...”

Helen grew up in New Zealand. Her parents were athletes and mountain climbers. Following her parents’ example, she climbed her first mountain at 9. Later, she climbed the highest mountains in North and South America, the former USSR and New Zealand.

In 1996, she took on another challenge — the Sahara Desert. She and her husband, Bill, walked 2,400 miles across it! In 2001, she and Bill traveled on foot from west to east through the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. They hope to travel to Sichuan and Tibet in China to study pandas this year.

Helen plans to continue taking trips. She’ll use her explorations, writing, photography and environmental work to create programs for her Adventure Classroom website. She wants to inspire her students never to stop facing challenges!