Over the past 44 years, Liu Guizhen has worked as a doctor, teacher, entrepreneur and village leader. She has taken on all these roles in a mountain village in North China. This year, she is taking on another role in Beijing.
Liu, nearly 60, has been a village doctor since 1978. She also worked as a village teacher from 1988 to 2017. She has served as village Party chief since 1996, and even founded a local cooperative in 2018.
After a long battle against pecuniary hardship, Duanjiawan village in North China's Shanxi province, bid farewell to poverty in 2017, thanks to Liu's efforts. Locals in the village hail her as the "mountain's daughter" for her decadeslong dedication to this cause.
This year, Liu was elected as a delegate to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
"I feel very lucky. I'm just an ordinary person from a valley in the mountains doing some simple things," Liu says.
