Eric's Insight: Women make dreams in Yunnan, setting pace to provincial growth

Zhang Guimei, head teacher of the Huaping Girls' High School in Lijiang, wins a national award for role models. Photo/Yunnan Net

In the mellow month of March, the 113th International Women's Day came to us as scheduled, and it was marked Wednesday across Yunnan, a province full of vitality and possibility.

Women are an indispensable force in social progress and the development of times. They are mothers, daughters and wives in the family, but they can never be limited to their traditional sphere of household. Women also play the roles of astronauts, engineers, doctors and police officers at diverse sectors, where they have worked hard and thus given a strong pull to progress of the whole society.

On the fertile land of Yunnan, women shine like blooming roses and contribute a lot to provincial development. In the past decade, 1,165 women in Yunnan have been entitled as national and provincial pacesetters in multiple fields, and 460 woman entities have emerged as model units at national and provincial levels.

Zhang Guimei, head teacher of Huaping Girls' High School in Lijiang, Zhu Zhaoyun, an academician at China Academy of Engineering, Dai Qionglan, a model resident in China, Li Yunli, a most beautiful volunteer... These shining women have become the pacesetters who inspired people in Yunnan and encouraged us to forge ahead on the new journey.

Women in Yunnan are truly hard workers. In the rural-revitalization drive, the skilled women led their fellow folks to common prosperity, allowing the whole province to be removed from the impoverished list. On the road to a well-off society in all respects, not even a single ethnic sister was left behind, and neither was a single poor woman in rural areas.

In the field of science and technology, Yunnan women faced the challenges, but they devoted themselves to research, and overcame difficulties one by one. Many female scientific and technological workers, experts and scholars are playing their parts in the high-tech fields and emerging industries.

In the wave of innovation and entrepreneurship, some braver women have transcended themselves, showing their own self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement. With their courage, dedication and persistence, women in Yunnan have worked as hard as men, and they also proved themselves to be as capable as men.

Born in the 1990s, Hui Huan is brave enough to train police dogs for the Yunnan Entry-Exit Inspection Station; Lv Jingyun, a senior engineer at the Baihetan Hydropower Station, has devoted herself to electricity production for 28 years; and Luo Benjuan has been an officer for aviation safety. These positions are traditionally held by male workers.

"Born to be a mountain rather than a stream, I look down on mediocre ravines from the peaks. Born as an outstanding person, I stand on the “shoulders” of great minds and despise humble cowards!" These words are the oath taken by girls at the Huaping high school in northwest Yunnan’s Lijiang city, and such an oath can also encourage more women in the region to be shining dream makers.

(The writer Xu Yunfei is a commentator with Yunnan Net, and the Chinese version of the article first appeared on the network on March 8. The view in the article does not necessarily represent that of Yunnan Gateway, for whose purpose some parts of the original version have been adapted or abridged.)