Even for a certified teacher with a degree and teaching certificate from Florida, a certain embarrassment exists. The two words “English teacher” don’t clearly show who I am.

Let me explain: When I go back to the US, I meet all my old friends. Some are stressed, exhausted and generally unhappy. They are stuck in jobs they don’t love that they do only to pay the bills. Even the ones making good money don’t even have the time to spend it and enjoy themselves. If I were in the US and I was working as a teacher, accountant, lawyer or so on, then that would be my job more or less for the next 30 to 40 years. I might have other talents, but I would be limited in being able to explore them.

In China the system is fluid for everyone: Chinese and expats（侨民）. I know many friends, both Chinese and expats, who changed careers because they wanted something new and it didn’t require going back to university four more years. All it required was motivation and a calculated risk. One of the best things about living in China for me is that I can explore different career choices and actually find one that I truly love. Let’s face it people change over the years: Your likes, your abilities and even the things that make you happy are constantly changing. Why shouldn’t your jobs and the opportunities also change with you?

When people ask me if I love my job, my answer is ‘YES.’ In China I have had many jobs: actor, model, salesman and teacher at various stages during my seven years here. And no one told me “You can’t do that.” There was no self-limiting. In China, if you have the motivation to work hard and the drive to succeed then opportunities present themselves around every corner.

My elder brother Steve, in the absence of my father who died when I was six, gave me important lessons in values that helped me grow into an adult.

For instance, Steve taught me to face the results of my behavior. Once when I returned in tears from a Saturday baseball game, it was Steve who took the time to ask me what happened. When I explained that my baseball had scared through Mrs. Holt’s basement window, breaking the glass with a crash, Steve encouraged me to confess (认罪) to her. After all, I should have been playing in the park down Fifth Street and not in the path between buildings. Although my knees knocked as I explained to Mrs. Holt, I offered to pay for the window from my pocket money if she would return my ball.

I also learned from Steve that personal property is a sacred (神圣的) thing. After I found a shiny silver pen in my fifth-grade classroom, I wanted to keep it, but Steve explained that it might be important to someone else in spite of the fact that it had little value. He reminded me of how much I’d hate to lose to someone else the small dog my father carved from a piece of cheap wood. I returned the pen to my teacher, Mrs. Davids, and still remembered the smell of her perfume as she patted me on my shoulder.

Yet of all the instructions Steve gave me, his respect for life is the most vivid in my mind. When I was twelve I killed an old brown sparrow in the yard with a BB gun. Excited with my accuracy. I screamed to Steve to come from the house to take a look. I shall never forget the way he stood for a long moment and stared at the bird on the ground. Then in a dead, quiet voice, he asked, “Did it hurt you first, Mark?” I didn’t know what to answer. He continued with his eyes firm,” The only time you should even think of hurting a living thing is when it hurts you first. And then you think a long. long time.” I really felt terrible then, but that moment stands out as the most important lesson my brother taught me.

A leading female biomedical scientist hopes more women will choose to do what they like in life, rather than fall into the traditional roles they have been expected to play in the past. Zhang Xin, vice-director and principal investigator at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, said recently that she had noted far fewer women than men in research institutes. “For example, for us here at our institute, about 20 percent of scientists are women at a certain level — say, associate professor level — but at my level it’s less than 10 percent,” Zhang said.

Born in 1979 and a returnee from overseas, Zhang has been focusing on research involving magnetic fields and how to use them to improve human health. “Take the magnetic resonance imaging machine for example. It has a very strong magnet inside and can help doctors see inside your body. It is the most common high magnetic field found in everyday life,” said Zhang, who has been working in Hefei, Anhui province, since 2012.

She had majored in biomedicine through her school years at home and abroad. “I chose medicine because my grandpa was a very excellent doctor and my parents hoped that I could be a doctor too,” Zhang said. She accomplished that, just not in the medical field. Instead, she earned a PhD, saying it’s reasonable that one’s initial inspiration might come from the family, but a person should not always follow a path designed by other people.

Zhang, who has a daughter and a son, said it’s regrettable that most women spend much of their lives taking care of their family, including the elderly. “In China, pressure is coming from society but also from women themselves,” she said.“I try to take advantage of all the help I can get,” Zhang said, noting that she gets a lot from her parents-in-law. Her husband, who is also her colleague at the physical science institutes in Hefei, also spends as much time as possible with their kids, Zhang said. She encourages more fathers to do the same.

After first characterizing her husband’s child care as “help”, Zhang paused and corrected herself. She said he is not so much helping her as simply doing what every father should do.