Mary: the Christian scientist

This is the fourth of six posts introducing the six ‘heros and heroines’ (and sometimes villains?) of this blog.

Mary, from Dalian, is in the final year of her master’s degree in Mining Spatial Information and Subsidence Engineering at a technical university in north-west Beijing. To give an idea of just how over-my-head her subject flies, her Bachelor’s thesis was titled “The Monitoring and Evaluation of Ecological Damage Based on Remote Sensing in Typical Mining in Mentougou District”.

She is also a Christian – among the already large, and rapidly growing, number of converts in China. It’s a number which proves difficult to pin down: somewhere around the 50 million mark is a good bet.

Mary keeps herself busy: besides her rigourous studies, she tutors Mandarin, volunteered on a charity camp in Yunnan this winter break (more on this to come) and is applying for a competitive PhD spot in foreign universities in the US and Finland. I wonder sometimes if it all gets on top of her.