Ching Tien grew up in Beijing in the 1960s, the daughter of high-ranking communist officials. But her education and dreams of becoming a journalist ended with the Cultural Revolution. Ching’s father was jailed and her mother, a doctor, was forced to work in Gansu, one of the poorest province in China.
For eight years, Ching labored in a factory and witnessed dire poverty alongside her mother – people living in caves with no running water or electricity. This stayed with Ching, who moved to Canada in 1983. After raising a family, Ching created Educating Girls in Rural China, a nonprofit to help educate impoverished young women hold up half the sky. This is her amazing story.