Many years ago, when I was fresh out of school and working in Denver, I was driving to my parents’ home in Missouri for Christmas. I stopped at a gas station (加油站) about 50 miles from Oklahoma City, where I was planning to stop and visit a friend. While I was standing in line at the cash register (收款台), I said hello to an older couple who were also paying for gas.

I took off , but had gone only a few miles when black smoke poured from the back of my car. I stopped and wondered what I should do. A car pulled up behind me. It was the couple I had spoken to at the gas station. They said they would take me to my friend’s. We chatted on the way into the city, and when I got out of the car, the husband gave me his business card.

I wrote him and his wife a thank-you note for helping me. Soon afterward, I received a Christmas present from them. Their note that came with it said that helping me had made their holidays meaningful.

Years later, I drove to a meeting in a nearby town in the morning. In late afternoon I returned to my car and found that I’d left the lights on all day, and the battery (电池) was dead. Then I noticed that the Friendly Ford dealership — a shop selling cars — was right next door. I walked over and found two salesmen in the showroom.

“Just how friendly is Friendly Ford?” I asked and explained my trouble. They quickly drove a pickup truck to my car and started it. They would accept no payment, so when I got home, I wrote them a note to say thanks. I received a letter back from one of the salesmen. No one had ever taken the time to write him and say thank you, and it meant a lot, he said.

“Thank you” — two powerful words. They’re easy to say and mean so much.

A girl, who made headlines around the world when she survived almost two weeks alone in the Siberian wilderness, has won a Russian children’s beauty contest for her bravery. Karina Chikitova, who clung (抱着) on to her loyal puppy, fought to stay alive in a forest full of brown bears and wolves. The promising ballerina celebrates her 10th birthday on Boxing Day and has already won the Mini Miss Yakutia contest.

In August 2014 she was found after a dozen days and nights lost in the remote taiga, sleeping on a bed of long grass and eating wild berries to stay alive. Karina had followed her father into the woods but he had no idea she was trailing him. Then just four years old, she hugged her puppy Naida for warmth in the shivering (颤抖的) cold before the dog found its way home to a remote village, urging rescuers not to give up, and to go and find the little girl.

Karina’s trial was seen as so remarkable that a statue was erected (竖起) of her and the dog in regional capital Yakutsk. A popular children’s book was also written about her, and her fame as a Mowgli seems to have led this remote village girl to amazing new opportunities. Karina was “excited” after she easily won the Mini Miss contest in a social media poll for her rare experience when she was little, making her a young ambassador for Yakutia, Russia’s diamond region, the coldest inhabited place in the world. She is seen as a promising ballerina, already studying full time in Yakutsk, some 350 miles from her home.

“I want to become a ballerina and dance Swan Lake,” she said. “I have also learned how to play the piano.” Bilingual Karina is doing well at school, where she has a talent for maths, and is learning English to add to her fluent Yakut and Russian. When she was found, her rescuer said: “She was sitting deep in grass, completely silent. I didn’t actually notice her. She saw me and stretched her arms forward. I picked her up. She was dead scared.” Later Karina said: “It was Naida who rescued me. I was really scared. But when we were going to sleep I hugged her, and together we were warm.”

Armenian musician Astrid Poghosyan, a 29-year-old violinist, takes great pride in the Chinese name she picked for herself, Ma Xingxing. Last summer, she were busy making preparations for a series of in-person and online music events and cultural exchange programs. Poghosyan said she always put all her energies into the projects which she took part in, whether they were offline or online events, as she believed that every little effort would help her realize her music-related dreams.

“I believe music knows no borders, and cultural exchanges through music are especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic (流行病),” she said. Having studied and worked in China for 13 years, Poghosyan has now become a real China hand, skilled at the country’s language and culture. Such a multicultural background has certainly helped her stand out in her present job. For Poghosyan, the life she now leads is a far cry from when she first came to China in 2009 to learn to play the violin at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. At that time, Poghosyan could not speak a word of Chinese. “And my high-school-level English wasn’t of much help at that time,” she said. “So I decided to learn Chinese to solve the communication problem.”

She has a strong desire for Chinese movies, traditional festivals and history stories, all of which helped her through the difficult language-learning process. As she gradually buried herself in the Chinese language and culture, she also started to make Chinese friends and explore the energetic city life of Shanghai.

“Since I first came to Shanghai, I have always been impressed by the kindness of the people here,” she said. “Even when I couldn’t speak Chinese, in the first days, everyone I met gave me a big smile. Their smiles have made me feel the warmth of the city.”