09/11/2026
China is handing its biggest billboards to scientists instead of celebrities, and the target audience is younger generation.
Four-storey screens that would normally push sneakers or a pop star's comeback now carry the faces of researchers, right above the coffee shops and the parked cars.
The man in this one is Yuan Longping. His hybrid rice fed hundreds of millions of people. Beside his portrait sit his own two dreams: napping in the shade of rice taller than a man, and seeing that rice spread across the whole world.
Most kids walking past couldn't have picked him out of a crowd. Now they can't miss him.
Every country teaches its children who matters. Some just do it louder.