At an age when people usually start forgetting things, this Chinese woman has managed to do the opposite – she’s actually memorized the entire Oxford English-Chinese dictionary from cover to cover!

Li Yanzhi, 51, from China’s Shaanxi Province, can not only recite all 220,000 entries in the 2,458-page dictionary, but can also accurately describe their meanings. Ms. Li works as a lecturer in Financial English at Xian Transport University’s Economic and Banking School. But she needs an extra income to be able to support herself and her 26-year-old autistic son who is unable to care for himself. A mother and divorcee of 20 years, Ms. Li said she took on the Herculean task in the hope of receiving more translating work.

She started studying the tome in August 2013, reading it every single day between 3am and 6am. To speed up the process, she borrowed 465 English language magazines from the university library, and within 19 days, she had finished her first round of memorization. Ms. Li’s vocabulary skills are now far more superior than any university student taking the College English Test Band 6 for which the candidates need to understand 6,000 words.

Apart from English. Ms. Li is also fluent in 10 other languages, including French, Russian, German, Japanese and Polish. “My biggest dream is to enter The Brain to challenge myself,” she said. The Brain is a popular Chinese reality TV show that uses a series of games that test contestants’ brain power.

Despite all the hardships she has faced through life, Ms. Li said that she has never thought about giving up. “If I can fly I will fly, if I cant fly I will run, if I cannot run I will crawl,’ she said.’No matter what you must move forward,” she said proudly.

Source: Xinhua via Daily Mail