Street Cleaner Becomes Professional Ballet Dancer at 63, Is Living His Best Life

A 63-year-old Chinese man who only started learning ballet a decade ago has gone viral on social media as a living example that you are never too old to follow your dreams.

Liu Ziqing has been a fan of ballet for as long as he can remember. He fell in love with it as a little boy, after watching The Red Detachment of Women ballet show in the early 1960s, more than 10 times, but he never really got the chance to practice it himself. Growing up in a poor family in a village near Baotou, the largest city in Northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, his main focus was always on helping his family and putting food on the table. Dancing was a luxury he could not afford. He ended up becoming a farmer but also worked as a street cleaner in order to make ends meet. But he never got over his love for ballet, and at age 53, he decided to become a ballet dancer.

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Man Spends 8 Years Carving 400 Stone Steps to Hilltop Temple

An Indian man has gained the admiration of millions of devotees after spending eight years carving over 400 stone steps to a hilltop Hindu temple using only a hammer and chisel.

The Baba Yogeshwar Nath temple in Bihar, Eastern India, was famous among devotees of Lord Shiva, but very difficult to reach because of its location at the top of a steep 1,500-foot hill. Able-bodied people spent hours climbing the hill every day, while the elderly, children and disabled people had virtually no way of reaching it without assistance. Trekking up and down the steep, rocky slopes was risky, and people often injured themselves trying to reach the holy temple. So one day, eight years ago, a local mason decided to make every devotee’s life a little easier by carving stone steps from the bottom of the hill all the way up to the temple.

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Bankrupt Former Millionaire Is Paying $6.4 Million Debt by Selling Sausages on the Street

A bankrupt former millionaire in China has been making news headlines for his plan to pay a debt of 46 million yuan ($6.4 million) by selling grilled sausages at a street food stall.

Not too long ago, Tang Jian, a restauranteur in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, was considered one of the most successful businessmen in all of Zhejiang Province. By the age of 36, he already owned a chain of restaurants and had amassed an enviable fortune. But in 2005, Tang decided to invest a sizeable portion of his money into a completely new industry and things started going horribly wrong for him. Now at 52, the former millionaire finds himself over $6 million in debt, but he is working hard to repay every single cent by selling grilled sausages on the street.

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The COPD Athlete – Man Runs Marathons With Only 30 Percent Lung Capacity

An Australian man has become known as the COPD Athlete because of his incredible ability to run entire marathons despite having only 30 percent lung capacity as a result of an incurable and progressive condition.

Russell Winwood was diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) in 2011. By that time, the Brisbane native had already turned his life around, having survived a stroke at age 36. He had given up smoking, cut down on drinking alcohol, started eating better, and, most importantly, he had taken up sports. For years, he competed in varying distances of triathlons, from sprint to Half Ironman and even a few ultra-marathons. Everything was going great, but at one point Winwood noticed that his usual training felt harder and he found it difficult to breathe. That’s when he received his COPD diagnosis, along with the warning that his lungs were operating at less than 30 percent capacity.

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60-Year-Old Grandpa Undergoes Impressive Body Transformation in Only One Year

A 60-year-old grandfather from Leeds, in the UK, has become an inspiration for people less than half his age after going from ‘dad bod’ to ‘ripped’ in just one year.

Looking at Steve Ramsden today, it’s hard to believe that only a year ago he was an overweight borderline diabetic struggling with high cholesterol. But it just goes to show you what hard work and dedication, corroborated with a balanced diet and proper exercise plan can do for a person. Ramsden, a paramedic for Yorkshire Ambulance Service, weighed 221 pounds (100 kilograms) last Christmas and was taking pills to manage his high cholesterol. Today, he weighs 159 pounds (72 kg) and looks like he has been hitting the gym every day for at least a few decades.

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Shanghai’s ‘Little Princess of Anfu Road’ Is an Unlikely Inspiration For Everyone

The ‘Little Princess of Anfu Road’ is a Chinese woman from Shanghais believed to be in her early 50s who always goes out in elegant Lolita-style dresses.

Photos of the ‘Little Princess of Anfu Road’ started doing the rounds online a few weeks ago, drawing mixed reactions from the general public. Some called her a breath of fresh air, others a ‘crazy old lady’ who dressed well below her years, but everyone was intrigued by her, as she always seemed to have a new outfit on, and she seemed to ooze self-confidence despite all the criticism directed at her. As the days passed by, interest in this mysterious character of Shanghai grew, and soon everyone learned that there was a heartwarming story behind her extravagant wardrobe.

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Meet Dexter, the Dog That Learned to Walk Like a Human

Dexter, a 7-year-old Brittany Spaniel from Colorado, has become an inspiration for many around the world after he taught himself to stand up and walk on his hind legs after suffering an accident.

When he was only a puppy, Dexter escaped his owners’ yard in Ouray, Colorado, darted into traffic and got hit by a car. One of his front legs had to be amputated and the other was severely damaged. But he survived, and that’s all his owners cared about. They assumed he would need some kind of wheelchair to get around without his front legs, and he did use one for a while, but only until he learned he could walk much faster on his hind legs alone. Since then, he has been walking like a human, turning heads around town and inspiring the entire world.

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World’s Most Loyal Employee Has Been Working for the Same Company for 84 Years

Walter Orthmann, a 100-year-old man from Brazil has been working for the same company since 1938, which officially makes his career worthy of the Guinness Book of Records.

Orthman began working for Industrias Renaux S.A., a textile company in Brusque, on January 17, 1938, when he was only 15-years-old. He began as an assistant in the shipping department, but over the years, he was promoted to administrative assistant and, eventually, sales manager. During his 84-year-long career, Walter went on sales trips all over the world, received his paycheck in nine different currency denominations, and used nearly every commercial airline in the history of Brazilian aviation.

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India’s ‘Living Dead’ and the Man Who Spent 18 Years Proving That He Was Alive

Lal Bihari is probably India’s most famous living dead, one of many people killed off in official records so that relatives can claim their possessions for themselves.

Killing off somebody on paper is apparently not that hard to do in India. All you need is some bribe money and local officials willing to do some dirty work in exchange for that money. Victims are usually people who have been away from their birthplace for a long time, and the culprits are greedy relatives trying to claim their land or their family homes. But once you’re dead in official records, proving that you’re actually alive is a much more difficult endeavor, especially when the people you are trying to convince are the very same who were paid to kill you off in the first place.

Lal Bihari’s story is probably the most famous example of a “dead man’s” struggle in India. His woes began in 1976, when he returned to his birthplace, the village of Khalilabad, in Uttar Pradesh, for residence, income and caste certificates, needed to secure a loan for his heirloom business. When the clerk first looked up at him and told him that Lal Bihari was dead, he smiled, but the clerk didn’t smile back…

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Isolated Villagers Spend 15 Years Carving a Road Through a Mountain

The people of Shenlongwan, a once-isolated village in the mountains of China’s Shanxi Province, spent 15 years carving through rock with chisels and hammers to connect their home to the world and escape poverty.

Benefiting from a very favorable climate, Shenlongwan has always been famous for its exquisite walnuts and pears, but getting their harvest to market used to be a serious challenge for the locals. That’s because until the year 2000, to reach the county seat of Changzhi City, they had to either detour through eight townships in three different provinces, or risk their lives climbing dangerous narrow ladders to reach a steep mountain pass. One day, the villagers decided that things had to change, and if the authorities wouldn’t build a road to their village, then they just had to do it themselves.

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Vietnamese Tattoo Artist Masks People’s Scars With Beautiful Artworks

A young tattoo artist who goes by the name ‘Ngoc’ on social media has become famous for helping people, especially women hide their scars by inking beautiful artworks over them

For many people having to live with visible scars, either from accidental burns, operations like appendectomy or cesarean section is an everyday struggle. But thanks to talented tattoo artist Ngoc, some of them don’t have to. The Hanoi-based artist is known as a magician in the Vietnamese tattooing community, as scars are considered very difficult to deal with, but she always seems to find the best design to perfectly conceal them.

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11-Year-Old Athlete Wins Multiple Gold Medals Running in Makeshift Shoes Made from Bandages

Rhea Ballos, an 11-year-old student of Salvacion Elementary School in Balasan, the Philippines, has become an overnight sensation after winning three gold medals in a provincial sports event, despite not having proper running shoes.

The young athlete managed to win the 400-meter dash, the 800-meter run and the 1,500-meter run in the girls’ categories while wearing strips of bandage over her feet instead of proper running shoes. Rhea basically ran barefoot, with the thin bandage offering minimal protection against the running track, but that didn’t stop her from beating all the other girls, all of whom were wearing running shoes, and taking home the gold at the inter-school sporting event held in Iloilo, central Philippines. Photos of the girl’s makeshift shoes, complete with a hand drawn swoosh logo, and the “Nike” brand scribbled on the side quickly went viral, wining her praises from all around the world.

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The Brazilian Couple Who Brought a Dead Subtropical Rainforest Back to Life

Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado is a world renowned social documentary photographer and photojournalist from Brazil, but few people know that he is also the mastermind behind one of the most amazing environment restoration projects in history. Together with his wife, Salgado has nearly completed the recovery of a single uninterrupted section of the Atlantic Forest, planting millions of saplings over the last two decades.

The story of Instituto Terra, the non-profit organization founded by Sebastião Salgado and his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, began in 1998. The celebrated photographer had recently returned from Rwanda, where he had documented the tragedies of war. The horrors he witnessed during those troubled wars haunted him long after he left Africa, and at one point he completely lost both his faith in humanity and the desire to shoot photos. It was around this time that Sebastião’s parents offered him and Lélia the old farm he had grown up in, and he took the opportunity to return home thinking that the idyllic paradise he remembered would help him heal. However, he found that his home was nothing like he remembered it.

Salgado grew up on a 1,750-acre farm in the state of Minas Gerais 70 miles inland from Brazil’s Atlantic coast. He recalls that, when he was only a boy, the Atlantic Forest covered half his family’s farm and half the Rio Doce Valley, and that the fauna that called it home created a cacophony of sounds every day. But that wasn’t the sight he came home to in the mid 90’s.

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Teenage Girls Pretend to Be Boys for 4 Years to Keep Father’s Barbershop Afloat

Two teenage sisters in India were recently honored for their grit and determination after it was discovered that they disguised themselves as boys for four years in order to keep their father’s barbershop open after he became ill.

Jyoti Kumari, 18, and her 16-year-old sister, Neha, from Banwari Tola, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, took over their father’s barbershop in 2014 after he suffered a severe paralytic attack that left him bedridden. The girls were only 13 and 11-years-old at the time, but the barbershop was the family’s only source of income, so they had to do something to put food on the table. At first, the barbershop was closed, but as the family savings evaporated, Jyoti and Neha reopened it and started running it themselves. But things didn’t go well at first, as some men were skeptical about having girls shave their beards and trim their mustaches, while others treated them badly. So they started disguising themselves as men.

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Chinese Millionaire Spends His Free Time Picking Up Trash From the Streets of His City

Zhong Congrong, a successful businessman from Chongqing, China, has become known as the “the millionaire trash collector,” for his longtime habit of scouring the streets of his city armed with a trash-picking claw and picking up any garbage he finds.

The 52-year-old entrepreneur began cleaning up the streets of Chingqing three years ago, after a family trip to southern China’s Hainan province, for the Chinese New Year. There, he met a retired university professor who had reportedly been picking up trash from one of the local beaches every day, for the last four years. He was so impressed with the woman’s dedication and commitment to trash collecting that he decided to replicate her daily habit in his home city, as soon as he got back from his vacation.

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