A career built on shaky ground

The desire to perform good deeds was nurtured in Zeren Zhima from an early age. She was born into a rural family in Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Sichuan, in 1976. At that time, local women were destined to do farm work. But her parents did not want her to be reconciled to such a life. Her father, a voluntary schoolteacher, made sure his two daughters studied hard so that they could leave the countryside.

She did not let her parents down. In her county's school graduation exams, she scored the highest marks, and was admitted to a college in Beijing specializing in disaster prevention technology.

Her hometown is located in a zone prone to natural disasters, such as quakes, forest fires and landslides. She witnessed some terrible catastrophes in her youth.

"My parents always taught me to give a helping hand when people are in trouble," Zeren Zhima says. "I think that pursuing studies in disaster prevention means putting this idea into practice, which can benefit a lot of people."

However, coming from a simple rural environment, it took her some time to adapt to modern urban life. "I didn't know how to use a telephone or how to take the subway," Zeren Zhima says, recalling her early years in Beijing.

The fact that she has dyslexia and, at the time, she could not speak Mandarin very well, meant that she had to work twice as hard to succeed.

She practiced Mandarin pronunciation by reading newspapers out loud for hours, and immersed herself in piles of tapes and books to hone her English listening and speaking skills. With two years of hard work, she became a straight-A student.

In 1999, Zeren Zhima took her next step, pursuing a bachelor's degree at the Guizhou Normal University in Southwest China. She majored in computer science, a popular subject back then due to the rise of the internet. She was good at math and English, and got offers for web engineering jobs from several foreign companies, but she turned them down and chose instead to study geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

At the country's highest academic institution in natural sciences, the workload was heavy. However, what kept her going was her original aspiration to devote her life to the welfare of others.