Peng Zhouyarou
Changsha, Hunan province,
China.
The story begins on the afternoon of June 9, 2023, the day China finished its 3-day national college entrance examination. After the exam, I happily rushed out of the room and encountered a journalist, who asked me about my plans after the this examination. In front of the camera, I candidly stated, I want to study education or social science in university, and then I can make efforts and actions for the world's educational equity and gender equality. Therefore, I want to work for UNESCO to promote education equity worldwide.
This dream to work with UNESCO was not an idea out of thin air but something deeply rooted in me. My hometown, Hunan, a province advocates of “Huxiang Spirit”, encouraged me to be daring and think about the world. Also, it motivated me to practically implement my vision of education and equality.
Talking about practical implementation of my visions, I tried to make positive influence people around me. For instance, in primary school I guided my classmates to the Orange Island in Changsha, the largest inland continent in the catchment of Xiangjiang River, and encouraged them to pick up garbage along the Xiangjiang River. Moreover, when I was growing up, I tried to keep myself updated about the history of important monuments just like Yuelu Academy, one of the oldest academies in the world.
Besides education and history, my interest extends to cultural heritage as well. As I can recall in junior high school in 2018, I was invited to participate in an activity entitled as, “Cultural Exchange of Changsha International Famous School in China”. In this activity, I confidently shared Xiang double-sided embroidery works. Xiang embroidery is one of the four most famous embroideries in China, having a history of more than 2,000 years. The students from well-known universities like Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Tokyo and many more excitedly tried to guess the embroidery patterns on both sides, and were amazed by the craftsmanship.
Furthermore, I worked for empowering girls and breaking gender stereotypes. I set up many sanitary towels aid bags in the girls' bathroom in my high school and spent thousands of yuan to maintain them. Additionally, I published articles on Women's Day and made speeches against menstrual shame so that more people could raise awareness on gender equality.
Because of my dedication and clear goals regarding awareness and equality that reflected in the interview, I was called as “UN girl” by netizens in China. I was appreciated on social media platforms and five days later, an official from the Human Resources Department of UNESCO responded to my interview by saying that, “I sincerely hope that more young people from China can join UNESCO in the future to start a career!”.
Likewise, I got a chance to meet Mr. Khan, Director of the UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia during the 2023 International Youth Forum (IYF) on Creativity and Heritage along the Silk Roads in Changsha. During the one-hour meeting, we had cordial communication and sincerely exchanged each other's ideas on educational equity. In an interview with reporters, Mr. Khan mentioned that the UNESCO officials replied to me so quickly because I am “the link between Changsha and UNESCO” and “an excellent representative of Chinese youth.”
I have been fortunate enough to have the coverage that helped to share my dreams. This enabled me to see a stronger connection between Changsha and UNESCO, and the promote the history and culture of Changsha.
On November 1, 2017, Changsha successfully joined UNESCO's "Creative Cities Network" and became China's first "UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts". Since 2017, Changsha has been the venue of IYF, and UNESCO's influence in Changsha is also increasing. Moreover, In June 2022, Changsha was successfully selected as the first batch of Youth development city in China, and Changsha, which has always attached great importance to the development of young people.
My passion to promote history and culture of Changsha along with the aims of UNESCO can be described in the words of a poet Qu Yuan who says,
“The road is long; I will go up and down and seek.”