The Wildfire Era

At fifteen, Lin Wanyi, a girl from a mountain village, believed life offered only two choices: get married or work in a factory. Her stepmother tore up her textbooks and forced her to take a factory job. Her birth mother's last words, "Education can change your fate," gave her the strength to leave the mountains with the top score in the county.

But fate dealt her one devastating blow after another: her first love was married off for an alliance, she miscarried in a torrential rainstorm, her business partner absconded with the funds from her cheongsam brand, and just as her career stabilized, she was diagnosed with a malignant tumor. Yet she remained as resilient as a wildflower growing between stones. From teacher-training student to brand founder and then guardian of intangible cultural heritage, she never gave up.

In eight years, she and the women of her mountain village turned an embroidery workshop into an international brand. Ten years later, confined to her sickbed, she wrote A Journal of Women's Growth. Twenty years on, she stood at the podium of UN Women. In the audience sat the stepmother who had once tried to force her to quit school, along with countless women whose lives she had helped transform.