Hi again and welcome back.

Lately quite a few people including my team have been urging me to do an episode on the latest hit TV show and the trending topic it has brought into the spotlight.

Even if you have never watched the show, you have definitely seen the discussions about it, in one form or another. Even though this is not really my type of show, I am curious and I'm quite intrigued by the popularity of it and a share amount of discussions it has prompted.

So I've tried to watch some of it and write about the storyline. Of course there are some good things about it. The acting is decent, the story seems interesting enough, however I couldn't help but noticing something. Even though this show is supposed to be about women, especially women in their thirties. The story line still focuses a lot on their relationship with their husband, boyfriend， about them joining mom competition or dealing with potential affairs. Now I'm not saying that's bad, of course that's part of a woman's life.

But if you think about it, when was the last time you watched a chinese TV show with women existing outside the context of family and romantic relationships，or with women thriving outside the role of daughter, girlfriend, wife and mother, or with women exploring topics outside the stereotypical topics like fashion, consumerism, love and marriage?

And it's very rare that you see a female character being applauded for being an interesting and fascinating person, not just an attractive woman.

So in today's episode, let me share with you the stories of five ladies in their thirties. I don't mean they are right now in their thirties, but they all manage to achieve something fascinating in their thirties.

They might not be the greatest or most famous people in the world in history, but their stories are definitely worth sharing. So here are the stories of five fascinating and badass women.

The first story is about Ada Lovelace. She was born in the early 19th century. And she was actually the daughter of the famously unstable romantic poet, Lord Byron. But that's not what she is famous for.

She is most famous for being the first person ever to publish an algorithm intended for a computer. So essentially, she was the original computer programmer.

And her genius was years ahead of our time. During Ada's childhood, her mother did not want her to inherit her father's unstable poetic temperament. So she raised Ada under a strict regiment of science, logic and mathematics; and Ada herself from childhood had a fascination with machines.

And during her career, she made elaborate notes on the idea of the analytical engine, and later published those notes when she was about 30. And these notes became one of the critical documents to inspire Alan Turing's work on the first modern computers in the 1940s.

Her incredible genius and her passion and vision for technology have made her a powerful symbol for modern women in technology. And her name was also used to refer to a very important programming language.

I'm moving on from a genius in technology, the next woman was a dare devil Tabei Junko. Junko was a Japanese mountaineer. In 1969, when she was 30, she established the women's mountaineering club for women only. And the club's slogan was let's go on and overseas expedition by ourselves.

And the group was the first of its kind in Japan. She later stated that she founded the club as a result of how she was treated by male mountaineers at the time. Some men, for example, refused to climb with her while others thought she was only interested in climbing as a way to find a husband.

But Junko was determined, and her club decided to tackle Mount Qomolangma. They formed a new group containing 15 members. Most of them working women coming from a range of professions, and two of the women including Junko were mothers.

Back in those days, it was very difficult for a group of female mountaineers to find sponsors for the expedition, because they were frequently told that women should be raising children instead of going on these dangerous expeditions.

And to save money she made much of her own equipment, for example, creating waterproof gloves out of the cover of a car and sewing trousers from old curtains. And against all these challenges, in 1975, at the age of 36 Junko became the first woman to ever reach the summit of Mount Qomolangma, and into interview following her achievement, she said rather than being known as the first woman to do it, she wanted to be remembered as the 36 person to achieve this.

Her adventure did not stop there. She went on to ascend the seven summits, climbing the highest peak on each continent. She devoted her entire life to something that she was really passionate about.

The next fascinating lady is Waris Dirie, she was 1 of 12 children born into a large nomadic family in Somalia. At about age 13, she ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage with a 60 year old man, and her price as a bride was five camels.

From then, she embarked on a long and treacherous journey that took her through the desert and eventually to London. Back then she was illiterate, she couldn't read, she was not educated. She worked extremely hard and she took classes to learn to read and write English.

In 1983 at age18, a woman on the street approached Dirie about modeling and directed her to the British photographer Terence Donovan. And the photos he took of her launched her career. She went on to appear on the runways of Paris, Milan and New York.

If you think this is just about a poor girl from Somalia becoming a super model, then you are much mistaken. Dirie had her own painful past. She had undergone female genital mutilation at about age five.

She overcame personal and cultural barriers to speak openly about the experience during a 1996 magazine interview, and her celebrity status helped to bring this topic into the public eye.

And in 1997, at the age of 32, she was appointed as the UN's special ambassador for the elimination of female genital mutilation. She gradually switched from her super model career to focus on her new goal of preventing future generations of women from suffering as she had.

She traveled and spoke extensively and she founded the desert dawn foundation to raise funds for Somalian clinics and schools as well as the Waris Dirie foundation to advocate for the appellation of female genital mutilation.

And in 2009, they actually made a film about her life called Desert Flower.

And talking about facing adversity, the next lady Stella Young had a lot to overcome. She was born with osteogenesis imperfecta.

She used a wheelchair for most of her life. But despite her physical condition, she grew up to be a media presence and also a comedian was a sharp tongue.

And she spoke openly on media and at Ted talk about society’s habit of turning disabled people into what she called inspiration porn. She actually gave a Ted talk entitled “I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much”.

She advocated for real effort. For example, she said, people say the only disability in life is bad attitude. The reason I think this is bullshit is because no amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp, no amount of standing in the middle of the bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille.

Even though sadly she passed away in her thirties, I still think she was really a badass woman for speaking the truth and keeping a sharp sense of humor against all adversity.

The last woman that I would like to mention is a Chinese lady. She might not be that famous, but to me, personally, she is a bit of a role model.

She was a reporter who got on a path of public service somewhat by accident. In 2013, several cases of child sexual abuse were reported, and she was very angry and she just couldn't sit still and after a brief discussion with a group of female reporters, she decided to act and she launched the girl's protection program.

And the mission of this program is to promote basic sex education to educate kids, especially very young girls in remote areas to protect themselves from sexual abuse.

Originally she thought it was going to be a short program，and then with increasing understanding and research, she started to realize that child sexual abuse is a worldwide problem and a long term issue that requires perseverance.

With China still being somewhat conservative when it comes to sex education, you can only imagine the type of challenges that she and her team must have been facing, but they are still going forward.

And that commitment makes her a fascinating woman in her thirties who is actively making a difference.

If I'm being honest, with the Happy Hour team and community, I would very much like to make a real difference in the future as well.

And that ends the stories of five fascinating women. In the end, I just wanna say wouldn't it be great if one day that we can all be celebrated for our unique life experiences that transcend gender and age.

Then we can just shrug and say I'm a woman, I'm in my thirties, so what? You still have your whole life ahead of you. Your life story is what you make of it. If you have stories to share with us, feel free to leave a comment.

I'll see you next time. Bye.

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