Lü Meng
Lü Meng was from Fupo County (富陂縣), Runan Commandery (汝南郡), which is located southeast of present-day Funan County, Anhui. His family migrated to the south of the Yangtze River when Lü Meng was young. Lü Meng lived with his brother-in-law, Deng Dang (鄧當), who served as a military officer under Sun Ce. When he was 14 or 15, he secretly followed Deng Dang to the battles against the Shanyue tribes. Deng Dang was shocked to see his teenage brother-in-law in battle, so he scolded Lü Meng and warned him to stop. Lü Meng refused to listen so Deng Dang told Lü Meng's mother about this. When she wanted to punish him, Lü Meng said: "It is difficult to survive in poverty. If we can prove ourselves through hard work, then wealth will come eventually. How can we catch the tiger cub if we don't enter the tiger's den?" Lü Meng's mother sighed and let him have his way.
Wu Qing (politician)
Wu was born in 1937 in China, the daughter of the famous woman novelist Bing Xin and the pioneering sociologist Wu Wenzao. She received her primary education at Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the early 1940s. While studying in the first grade her mother had encouraged her to raise funds for the soldiers wounded in the war. She was also told to share and be helpful to others. Her father was a sociologist who had founded the theory of sociology as relevant to China and encouraged students to do research in this field. After the war, he was posted as the Head of the Guomindang Chinese Diplomatic Mission to Japan. Christianity also influenced her as she studied in the International School of Sacred Heart in Tokyo from 1949 to 1951. While still a student, on her return from Japan, the books which influenced her were: "Serve the people heart and soul" by Mao Zedong and the Russian novels such as "Zoya", "Shura" and the "Gadfly" and many books on history and sociology. Premier Zhou Enlai was her father's friend and her role model, and he encouraged her to learn English as it provided a link to the outside world. As her family was democratic she was outspoken from a young age. She was the Communist Youth League secretary of her class. In 1957, her college education was at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute (now known as Beijing Foreign Studies University). She was very bright in her studies and also got involved with tree-planting initiative in the hills and tile making as part of rural service, which first exposed her to rural life. After her studies, from 1960 she joined the institute as an English teacher.