Year-ender: 10 awe-inspiring stories in China (7)

Zhang Jianna, a city cleaner, learns English. [Photo/Official WeChat account of Xinhua News Agency]

Zhang Jianna, 49, is a migrant worker from a rural village in North China's Hebei province. In 2012, she took on the role of a sanitation worker in the embassy area of Sanlitun in Beijing's Chaoyang district.

A special encounter while working motivated Zhang to learn English by herself.

One morning, a foreigner approached her, gently tapped her shoulder, and spoke a long string of unfamiliar words to her. Standing there, her mind going bewildered and blank, Zhang didn't know how to react.

The foreigner seemed to recognize her awkwardness and gestured for her to look ahead, giving a thumbs-up while repeatedly saying, "Good, good!" Zhang suddenly realized that the foreigner was appreciating her work in keeping the streets clean.

"Persistence is key to learning English. Learn step by step, learn every day," Zhang said. To date, she has accumulated a vocabulary of around 3,000 English words, enabling her to converse fluently with foreigners.