A Chinese farmer's daugher in U.N. for conference on women

As an ordinary Chinese farmer's daughter, Tian Fengyin could hardly expect that she would have the opportunity to march on streets of New York, along with thousands of others, from the U.N. headquarters to the Times Square to mark the International Women's Day.

In 1995, Tian Fengying, a middle school teacher, sat before the TV and watched carefully in her farm home in Huairou because a U.N. conference on women issues was taking place in the district, some 50 km from downtown Beijing.

Twenty years later, Tian has became a successful painter and now is at U.N. Headquarters in New York to attend a week-long meeting in a bid to assess the progress that has been made due to the landmark documents adopted in 1995 at the Fourth U.N. Conference on Women.

"When the Conference on Women was held in my hometown, I never thought of being part of the march organized today by the United Nations," Tian told Xinhua.

Among the distinguished speakers who addressed the marchers, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sounded a call for global action for women.

"Progress has been too slow, uneven," Ban said as he recalled that it was 20 years since the Beijing Declaration and sounded a rallying cry for the U.N.'s object of Gender Equality Planet 50-50 by 2030.

"That's our target. We must make it happen," Ban said, "Let's work to make it happen!"

"When the secretary-general mentioned the Beijing Declaration in his speech today, I felt very proud because I came from a place where the U.N. Conference on Women was successfully convened," Tian said.

Tian is here to attend a conference to assess the progress of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action during the 59th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which kicks off here Monday.

The Chinese painter, who flew to New York from Beijing on Saturday, overcame jet-lag and braved the cold weather here Sunday to attend the march.

"When I was marching with thousands of people from other countries, I, from the bottom of my heart, felt an urge to work harder for world peace and global development," she said.

"To my understanding, women's status and empowerment are closely associated with a peaceful and developing environment," Tian added, "How can you talk about the advancement of women's basic rights when they are still afflicted by insecurity and instability?"

In fact, Tian, a teacher of fine art, was very much inspired by the Beijing Conference.

"When people in my hometown opened arms and hearts to welcome participants worldwide, they helped the U.N. event in Beijing to achieve a success," she said.

"I, a Chinese woman, can also reach out to the outside world with my painting brush."

Thanks to her painstaking efforts over the past years, Tian was well received at her personal art exhibitions in such European countries as France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, where the oil painting was originated.

Some of her paintings, mainly featuring the Chinese Great Wall, were collected by the Louvre Museum in France, the French Ministry of Finance and the Chinese Embassy in Paris.

Christine Lagarde, then the French minister of finance and the current chief of the International Monetary Fund, lauded Tian at the opening of her art show at the French Ministry of Finance as a link of friendship between the Chinese and French peoples.

"I presented beautiful sceneries in my hometown and my country to the outside world with the strokes that can be understood by foreign audiences -- which is my target -- to build a bridge of friendship between the Chinese people and foreigners," Tian said.