40 years on: Hangzhou entrepreneurs honored as reform pioneers

Fan Jinshi, an archaeologist and honorary dean of Dunhuang Academy

If it had not been for Fan Jinshi and her team, the world cultural heritage at Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in a remote Chinese desert might have long been destroyed by the elements.

Born in 1938, the 80-year-old Hangzhou native has spent half a century fighting an uphill battle to preserve the ancient Buddhist wall paintings at Dunhuang, in Northwest China's Gansu province.

She is lauded as a "daughter of Dunhuang" for her over 50 years of devotion to studying and preserving the 1,600-year-old Dunhuang Grottoes, which was China's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.