Footprints

Dunhuang is a small city in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu. It has a history of more than 2000 years and has been crowned as “a place born in legends.” Neil Schmid is the first full-time foreign researcher in the Dunhuang Academy. In this episode of Footprints, we’ll find out why an American has decided to settle down in this remote Chinese city and what Dunhuang truly means to him. Let’s together explore its relevance to China and the rest of the world today from an expat scholar’s perspective.

Footprints presents "The Incredibles" where you will meet ordinary but incredible individuals. Though spending a pleasant evening in the theatre and watching a world-class West End or Broadway musical is more than common for western audiences, it was quite an unusual pastime for the Chinese audiences until more than a decade ago. That was when Yang Jiamin, our guest for this episode, founded her own musical production company.

​Twenty-eight year old Tenzin Yeshi is a fervent performer, researcher and promoter of Tibetan opera, listed as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2009. Born into a family of artists in Lhasa, he compares the traditional art as the “butter” of his life, meaning it’s in his genes and it’s his mission to pursue a career in it.

Using smartphones to deal with nearly everything in daily life has become a no-brainer for most of us, but for those who were born and grew up in a pre-digital era, technology often moves too fast for them to keep up. Post 90’s Zhang Jiaxin believes closing the gap between the elderly and new technology can be an effective way to solve many of the problems with aging. In this episode of Footprints, we’ll bring you the story of this young man who endeavors to help China’s non-tech savvy older population to go digital.

A space photographer, an astronomer-turned-influencer, a science writer and a programmer… The list goes on as we struggle to find the most appropriate way to introduce Liu Boyang, who has awed the country for “stalking” and capturing every important moment of the developing Tiangong Space Station. In this episode of Footprints, you’ll hear the story of a stargazer, who tirelessly explores every possibility to show people why we need to appreciate the starry sky and learn about space and the universe.

Footprints presents "The Incredibles" where you will meet ordinary but incredible individuals. Based on traditional Chinese thinking, our body is received as a gift from parents, and should not be damaged even after death. But for organ donation coordinators like Liu Yuan, doing their job is to walk against this belief. In this episode, Liu Yuan discloses on how he and his team push forward China's development in the cause of organ donation and transplants.

​Forty-four-year-old Mao Mingrui is a Beijing-based professional solving the problems occurring in public spaces within a city—traffic jams, poorly-designed or badly-maintained roads, street noise, and so on. Since 2016, he, calling himself “a city doctor”, has been leading a team which aims to create a better city environment using modern technologies.

30-year-old Xiao Jia is China’s first blind make-up artist. ‘Seeing’ and creating beauty herself, she makes it possible to live a life without limits, and her story is a challenge to people's preconceptions of the visually impaired.

With the boom in e-commerce, online reading and audio books, some say the future of brick-and-mortar bookstores looks bleak. A young Chinese bookseller, however, believes otherwise. By tapping into a niche market, she has managed to grow her business in the past decade and attracted many loyal customers. In this episode of Footprints, we’ll take you to a hidden-gem specialty bookstore in Beijing to meet its manager, Hong Xia, who has succeeded in beating all the odds to keep a physical bookstore alive.

Footprints presents "The Incredibles" where you will meet ordinary but incredible individuals. Wang Xuetao is the boss of a Beijing-based interior decoration company. In this episode, she shares with us how she became a house renovation contractor in an industry mostly dominated by men.