Footprints

In Beijing's Shunyi District, a nonprofit organization called HOPE (Horses Offering People Enrichment) is bringing children with special needs together with horses, and changing lives in the process. Founded in 2009 by American physical therapist Priscilla Lightsey, HOPE began as a personal mission and has grown into a community of dedicated staff members and hundreds of volunteers. This episode explores the power of healing on horseback.

For archaeologist Dong Ningning, horse bones are historical archives. Through scientific analysis, she interprets their clues to reconstruct the animal's profound impact on ancient Chinese transportation, language, social hierarchy and other aspects of lives and culture.

Dong Lina is the first visually impaired person in China to earn a master's degree in broadcasting. With quiet perseverance, she has charted an unconventional path, opening new possibilities for others like her to pursue their life goals.

Nestled in the mountains of southwest China's Guizhou Province, Zheng'an County has become the world's guitar capital – producing one out of every seven guitars around the globe. Amid the hum of factories and the rhythm of craftsmanship, a 25-year-old South Korean named Kim Jung-hun has found his place. As a sales manager for a South Korean guitar accessories company, Kim is embracing new opportunities in this guitar town.

Have you ever dreamed of cycling around the world? For most of us, that seems too challenging, too expensive, and too risky. But for Luo Mingning, aka Mowgli, dreams are meant to be chased. A bike mechanic originally from a small village in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southwest China, Mowgli set off on a bamboo bicycle he had built himself. From April 2022 to November 2025, he spent four years cycling across the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Besides his own tenacity, he also was showered with kindness from friends and strangers along the way, solved many problems and discovered a world that was bigger, warmer, and more surprising than he had ever imagined.

Against all odds, researcher Zhao Zhihai pioneered the world's first hybrid foxtail millet, achieving a major agricultural breakthrough. His "Zhangzagu" varieties broke yield records and introduced herbicide resistance, transforming a subsistence crop into a high-yield, drought-tolerant solution for China and Africa.

When Shanghai police officer Jiang Jingwei was mistaken for a long-lost son, he made a decision that would change the life of a family 1,000 miles away. In 2003, in north China's Shanxi Province, an accident claimed Liang Qiaoying's eldest child and left her paralyzed, with the cognitive level of a young child. To protect her from the devastating truth, her husband, Xia Zhanhai, told her their son was away working in a city. Years later, Xia saw a man on TV who looked exactly like his lost son – Jiang – and reached out in desperation. Jiang agreed to step into that role, and that promise has lasted for 12 years, bringing hope and comfort to a family he had never met.

This July, Thomas Rabe, Chairman of the John Rabe Communication Center, was granted the Friendship Envoy Award at the second Orchid Awards in Beijing for promoting cultural understanding and friendship between China and Germany. Eighty-eight years ago, his grandfather John Rabe, a German businessman stationed in Nanjing in 1937, managed to shelter and save 250,000 Chinese civilians from atrocities committed by Japanese invading forces during one of the darkest moments in human history, known as the Nanjing Massacre. In this podcast, Thomas Rabe shares with us the Rabe family's special bonds with China which spans over a century and four generations.

Women hold up half the sky. This is a well-known saying in China. It's been three decades since China declared gender equality a basic national policy. So, what is the progress in social status of Chinese women today? In this podcast, we will find the answer from Guo Ye, Director of the Women’s Studies Institute of China, who has been actively involved in the promotion of gender equality and women empowerment.

​For more than a decade, Hu Zijing has championed Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in South Africa against all odds. His contributions have been both foundational and far-reaching: he played an instrumental role in launching South Africa’s first accredited university degree program in acupuncture and drafted the national regulations governing the dispensing of TCM medicines.