CCTV news from Tianjin on September 5 (reporter Zhang Qiang and trainee reporter Yang Hui) Some people packed their bags and headed west from the coast of the Bohai Sea to Lhasa for an appointment on the plateau; some people held up algorithms to make smart diagnosis and treatment give breast cancer patients more life; some people traveled 15,000 kilometers to teach "rivers, lakes and seas" in South American classes one by one. Heading west, looking new, and looking outward—taking root, breaking through, and opening up—are the three postures needed in this era.
The three paths of youth lead in the same direction: place your abilities where the country needs them most.
Head west and spend your youth on the snowy plateau
The stage of struggle for contemporary youth is never limited to desks and laboratories. Qi Xin, a 2026 master's degree graduate from the School of Chemical Engineering of Tianjin University and a member of the Communist Party of China, has made youth shine in the fertile ground at the grassroots level with his struggle of integrating knowledge and action. In July this year, Qi Xin packed up his bags and headed west in the snow, officially taking root at the grassroots level in Tibet and embarking on a different path of youthful struggle.
After three years of graduate school, her battlefield was in the laboratory. Following her mentor, Professor Huang Guoqiang, she worked on membrane separation technology to purify chlorosilanes. Focusing on the hard problem of impurity removal, she developed a new type of mixed matrix membrane and optimized the preparation process. She has applied for 2 invention patents and authorized 1 utility model patent. In order to break the barriers between theoretical research and industrial implementation, she took the initiative to intern in chemical companies, and was deeply involved in polysilicon process engineering design and technical and economic evaluation. She jumped out of the laboratory and established an industrialized production mindset, which effectively improved her ability to use professional technology to solve practical industrial problems.
While deeply engaged in scientific research, Qi Xin always maintains a relaxed and moderate pace of life, taking into account both academic growth and overall quality improvement. She has been exercising regularly for a long time and actively participated in various cultural and sports events. She once won the runner-up in the National College Student Street Dance Championship. She has honed her stress resistance and sense of collaboration through stage practice and teamwork, and devoted herself to scientific research with a full physical and mental state. As a student cadre, she served as class monitor. She performed her duties conscientiously and was willing to contribute. She led by example and led the students around her to make progress together. She was awarded the title of Outstanding Graduate of Tianjin University.
Keep your home and country in mind and keep walking. When he graduated, faced with various career choices, Qi Xin took the initiative to respond to the country's call and went to the grassroots in Tibet. Today, Qi Xin has joined the Organization Department (Organization Office) of the Lhasa Municipal Party Committee to start his career at the grassroots level. "I will actively adapt to the plateau environment and work rhythm, and complete all tasks in a down-to-earth manner." Qi Xin said that according to the arrangement, she will work at the grassroots level in May next year and grow in practice. "Go to the place where the motherland needs it most" has changed from the oath on campus to the road underfoot.
"There are plateau winds and frosts on the road ahead, but there are also endless mountains and rivers." This is Qi Xin's youthful message to his junior students. From the shores of the Bohai Sea to the snowy frontier, this chemical engineering girl has proven with practical actions that integrating youthful struggle into frontier construction is never a slogan.
Xiangxin, breaking through at the intersection of medicine and industry
If taking root at the grassroots level is the persistence of youth, then cross-border innovation is the breakthrough of youth. Based on professionalism, breaking through boundaries, and overcoming difficulties at the forefront of scientific and technological innovation, Zhang Boya, a student of Nankai University, uses the power of cross-border integration to inject youth momentum into the innovative development of the medical industry.
Zhang Boya’s medical path started from the “5+3” integrated major of clinical medicine at Nankai University. In addition to eight years of systematic training, the diverse and open academic atmosphere of a comprehensive university gave her a judgment: medicine is never an isolated island and needs to be integrated with multiple disciplines. What really made this sentence come true was an unforgettable clinical experience - the painful experience of a young breast cancer patient, which made her determined to use technological innovation to reduce the patient's trauma and protect the dignity of the patient's life.
The original intention is set, but the road ahead needs to be developed from scratch. With his outstanding performance, Zhang Boya was selected into the first batch of students jointly trained by Nankai University and Beijing Zhongguancun University, officially entering the field of cross-research in artificial intelligence. The road to interdisciplinary and cross-border development is full of challenges at the beginning. She is deeply involved in medicine, and when she came into contact with hard-core engineering courses such as deep learning and optimization theory for the first time, she was at a loss and struggled to make progress, but she never backed down. "Interdisciplinarity is a process from 'not understanding' to 'understanding a little bit'. There is no need to rush. All that is needed is time and patience." Looking back on the cross-border journey from scratch, Zhang Boya was filled with emotion.
Zhongguancun University’s scientific research philosophy of “extremely basic, extremely applied, extremely interdisciplinary” has reshaped Zhang Boya’s research thinking. "In the past, when doing scientific research, I mostly looked for subtle innovations in existing research directions; now I will make breakthroughs based on the urgent clinical needs and patients' pain points." This kind of scientific research thinking of "beginning with the end in mind and problem-oriented" allows her to accurately target the global public health problem of intelligent minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of breasts. As the project leader, she coordinated an interdisciplinary team from different universities and majors, took everyone into the operating room to understand the clinical process, and repeatedly refined the technical plan with the engineers, completing the transformation from a solo researcher to a project leader with overall coordination. With solid implementation results, this project became the first batch of student science and technology projects supported by Zhongguancun University. Even at such a young age, she was invited to the high-end platform of the Zhongguancun Forum to hold academic dialogues with top scholars such as Nobel Prize winners, demonstrating the innovative power of young doctors.
Now in the second year of her Ph.D., she has always maintained the sobriety and calmness of a young researcher: "The most important thing at this stage is to calm down, solidify the technology, complete the project, and move forward step by step." Protecting life with a scalpel and empowering medical treatment with algorithms, she is using cross-border innovation to write about the responsibilities and responsibilities of young people in the new era.
Go outward and be a ferryman for Chinese and foreign cultures
Taking root in the frontiers to protect the fertile land, deeply cultivating scientific and technological innovation to break through bottlenecks, and crossing the ocean to spread Chinese civilization are another important responsibilities of the youth in the new era to their family and country. Yang Aiyin, a 2024 master's student at the School of Chinese Language and Culture at Nankai University, uses language as a bridge and culture as a medium to tell Chinese stories and convey the warmth of China thousands of miles away in South America.
"Teaching Chinese to foreigners is a cool thing." This original intention when he was young has supported Yang Aiyin all the way forward. During her undergraduate period, she took a break from school and joined the army with her pen. Her two-year military career in the army honed her character of perseverance and perseverance in facing difficulties. "Doing difficult things will lead to gains" became her unchanging life creed. After graduate school, she devoted herself to international Chinese education. In August 2025, she went to the Confucius Institute at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil to fulfill her duties, officially starting the road to overseas teaching and cultural dissemination.
When I first arrived overseas, language barriers, cultural differences, and lack of teaching materials became the biggest teaching difficulties. A misunderstanding about gesture culture allowed Yang Aiyin to quickly learn to teach students in accordance with local conditions and aptitude. She innovatively promotes immersive Chinese teaching, teaching the entire course in Chinese, supplemented by body language, graphic demonstrations, and dismantling the logic of Chinese characters from the origin of oracle bone inscriptions, allowing local students to understand the cultural heritage behind Chinese characters. In order to solve the problem of shortage of teaching resources, she also collaborated with local teachers to launch the "Thousand Words Project" to produce short bilingual videos in Chinese and Portuguese, focusing on life scenes to popularize Chinese knowledge and make Chinese learning lively and interesting.
In addition to teaching, Yang Aiyin has become an ambassador of Chinese culture, bringing the fragrance of Chinese tea and Eastern philosophy to Brazilian campuses and official stages. In Brazil, where coffee is popular, she used popular analogies to interpret the six major types of tea and the Chinese tea ceremony culture. Even though there were only 30 seats in a campus tea class, it still attracted more than 80 people to participate. She has appeared at the consulate's Spring Festival reception, China-Pakistan trade briefing, Chinese Culture Festival and other important events. She wears cheongsam as clothing and the fragrance of tea as matchmaker, showing an all-round image of China that is credible, lovely and respectable. At the beginning of 2026, at the Spring Festival reception of the Chinese Consulate General in Recife, Brazil, Yang Aiyin, dressed in a cheongsam, demonstrated tea art in front of a tea banquet. Some foreign guests praised: "This is authentic Chinese culture."
A year of volunteer service has come to an end. Yang Aiyin returned to school with her original intentions and beliefs unchanged: "I will definitely go back if I have the opportunity in the future. Chinese teaching in Brazil is still in its infancy, and I am willing to be a small screw on the cultural bridge between China and Brazil."
Youth is different, but the responsibilities are the same. From grassroots dedication taking root in the snowy region, to breaking through barriers at the forefront of scientific and technological innovation, to spreading culture across oceans, the three young students used different attitudes of struggle to fulfill the mission of youth in the new era. They integrate their personal ideals into the current of the times, take root, grow and make contributions where the motherland needs, the industry needs and the world wants, and they take responsibility for Chinese modernization with youth and hard work.
Jointly produced by the Cyberspace Affairs Office of the Tianjin Municipal Committee, the Tianjin Channel of the Central Broadcasting Network, and the Tianjin Internet Ideological and Political Platform
Source: cctv.com
