Louis Cha was expelled from high school for criticising the Chinese government, watched his father get executed for counterrevolutionary behaviour, yet would manage to get the next leader of China to become a fan of his wuxia novels, along with millions in Chinese-speaking territories around the world. This is the life of one of the most popular authors in Chinese literature. 

1924 – Zha Liangyong is born in Zhejiang Province, China to an “outstanding” family of scholars. He is the second child with an older brother, Liangjian who is 8 years older than he. 

Age 2 – His sister, Liangxiu is born. 

Age 4 – His second sister and third sibling, Liangxuan is born. 

Age 10 – His second brother and fourth sibling, Lianghao is born.

Age 11 – His brother, Liangdong is born.

Age 12 – His fourth brother and sixth sibling, Liangyu is born. He spends his childhood reading many novels. 

Age 13 – He enrols into Jiaxing No.1 Middle School. 

Age 17 – He is expelled for criticising the government as autocratic. He continues his education at Quzhou No.1 Secondary school. 

Age 19 – He graduates from Jiaxing High School and enrols in the School of Foreign Languages at Central University. He later drops out and transfers to Soochow University to major in international law. 

Age 23 – He joins Shanghai’s Da Gong Pao newspaper as a journalist. 

Age 24 – He is posted to Hong Kong to be a copyeditor. He is later transferred to New Evening Post to be a deputy editor and meets a new friend, Chen Wentong there. He marries Du Zhifen. 

Age 25 – His father, Zha Suqing is arrested and executed by the communist government in China for allegedly being a counterrevolutionary and the family’s estate is seized. Louis is safe because he lives in Hong Kong, then a British crown colony.  

Age 29 – Louis’ friend Wentong writes a wuxia (a genre involving the stories of martial artists in ancient China, usually with fantastical elements) novel under a pseudonym. By this time Louis has divorced his first wife and marries his second, Zhu Mei—a newspaper journalist. They will have 2 sons and 2 daughters together. 

Age 31 – Louis himself begins to write his first serialised wuxia novel under the pseudonym, Jin Yong. The Romance of the Book and Sword is published in New Evening Post. 

Age 32 – His second serialised wuxia novel—Sword Stained with Royal Blood—is published in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily.

Age 33 – He quits journalism and goes to work as a scenarist-director and scriptwriter for a movie company. He continues to work on serialised wuxia novels on the side and his third serialised wuxia novel—The Legend of the Condor Heros—is published in Hong Kong Commercial Daily.

Age 34 – He co-directs a film, The Nature of Spring, under the name Cha Jing-Yong, his official name in Hong Kong.  

Age 35 – He founds the newspaper Ming Pao together with his high-school friend. He works as its Editor-in-Chief and writes both serialised novels and editorials for it at the rate of approximately 10,000 words a day. His Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain and The Return of the Condor Heros are published that year in New Evening Post and Ming Pao respectively. 

Age 36 – He publishes Other Tales of the Flying Fox in Wuxia and History. He co-directs another film called Bride Hunter. 

Age 37 – He publishes 3 other wuxia serials in Ming Pao. 

Age 39 – He publishes 2 more wuxia serials in Southeast Asia Weekly. 

Age 41 – He publishes one more wuxia serial in Southeast Asia Weekly. 

Age 43 – He publishes his 13th wuxia serial in Ming Pao and Nanyang Siang Pao. He receives death threats from China’s communist underground for his anti-Maoist editorials and briefly hides out in Singapore. 

Age 45 – He publishes his 14th wuxia serial in Ming Pao and will continue to work on it for the next 3 years. 

Age 46 – He publishes his 15th and last wuxia serial—Sword of the Yue Maiden—in Ming Pao. By this time, Ming Pao has gained the reputation as one of Hong Kong’s most highly-rated press. 

Age 48 – Louis retires from writing and spends his time editing and revising his previous works. 

Age 52 – He divorces his second wife and marries his third, Lin Leyi who is 23 years of age. His son commits suicide while studying at Columbia University after a quarrel with his girlfriend. China’s leader Mao Zedong dies. 

Over the next years – Louis becomes involved in Hong Kong politics. His novels are banned in China because the Chinese think they are satires of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. His novels are also banned in Taiwan because the Taiwanese think they are in support of the Communist Party of China. 

Age 55 – He finishes revisions of all his previous works. His revised versions are known as “New Editions” in contrast to the “Old Editions”. A complete collection of all his works is published by Taiwan’s Yuenching Publishing House. 

Age 56 – The Wulin magazine in Guangzhou is the first magazine to publish his work. His novels by this time are very popular in Chinese-speaking areas around the world. They would later go on to be adapted into films, TV series and radio dramas in almost all Chinese-speaking territories. 

Age 57 – He is invited to meet China’s new leader Deng Xiaoping over dinner and the latter declares himself a fan of Louis’ work. He returns the compliment by saying good things about Deng in front of reporters. 

Age 69 – He sells all his shares in Ming Pao to prepare for retirement. 

Age 70 – His complete collection is published by Sanlian Shu Dian in Beijing, China. 

Age 71 – His complete collection is published in Southeast Asia by the Ming He Shi Singapore-Malaysia Company. 

Age 72 – He becomes part of the Preparatory Committee set up to supervise Hong Kong’s transition to the Chinese government. 

Age 73 – He suffers a stroke and is unable to walk, write or speak well. 

Age 74 – The asteroid 10930 Jinyong is named after him. 

Age 75 – Louis begins revising his novels again. 

Age 80 – An excerpt from his novel, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils are included in senior high school text books in China. Other excerpts are included in text books in Singapore for secondary and junior college students. 

Age 81 – He applies for a doctorate in Asian Studies at Cambridge University.

Age 82 – The revisions of all his novels are complete. These are known as the “New Century Editions”.

Age 85 – He applies for a doctorate in Chinese Literature at Peking University. 

Age 86 – He obtains his doctorate from Cambridge University. 

Age 89 – He earns his doctorate from Peking University. 

Age 94 – He dies in Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital of organ failure after a long illness. He is survived by his wife and 3 children. Famous writers, producers, actors, politicians and even Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma (a huge fan of his) attend his funeral. His ashes are kept at a columbarium in a monastery on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. By this time, over 300 million copies of his works have been sold worldwide. His personal wealth is estimated to be around HK$600million (US$77million).

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Photographs: 浙江省舟山市普陀区桃花岛旅游管委会, Hong Kong Heritage Museum. Compiler: Sy
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Blaise Pascal was not allowed to study Mathematics until age 15 and as a result, developed a lifelong curiosity for the subject. He eventually went on to invent the calculator, Pascal’s law, and probability theory, amongst many other mathematical things. This is the timeline of the man who changed the world of computing and mathematics forever. 

1623 – Blaise Pascal is born to a civil servant who serves as the King’s counsellor. He has 2 sisters. 

Age 3 – His mother dies. 

Age 8 – The family moves to Paris, France. Blaise’s father homeschools all his kids because he doesn’t like the way school is run. He emphasises education on Latin and Greek and doesn’t want his son to begin learning Mathematics too soon because he thinks it too enticing. This makes Blaise all the more interested in Mathematics.

Age 12 – Blaise’s curiosity leads him to start studying geometry on his own.  

Age 14 – He starts accompanying his father to mathematical meetings. 

Age 15 – Blaise is finally allowed to study Mathematics. 

Age 16 – The family moves to Rouen, France. Blaise studies hard but is often in poor health. He develops a theorem in geometry that he calls the “mystic hexagram”. He then writes a book, Essay on Conics, that discusses the geometry of cones and talks about his “mystic hexagram” in it. 

Age 19 – His father gets Blaise to help him calculate taxes for the King. To make their lives easier, Blaise invents a calculating machine that can add and subtract by moving a series of gears and cylinders. He calls the machine the Pascaline. He will continue to improve this design over the next decade. 

Age 23 – His father has an accident and is confined at home. Their neighbours who are Jansenists come to visit him and manage to convert the family to Jansenist beliefs. 

Age 24 – Blaise conducts a barrel experiment to prove that hydrostatic pressure depends on elevation difference. This will eventually be known as Pascal’s barrel experiment. He also does New Experiments With A Vacuum to describe how various liquids can be supported by air pressure.

Age 28 – His father dies. His sister joins a Jansenist convent. Blaise continues to enjoy secular life, paid for by his inheritance. 

Age 30 – Blaise writes the Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids and explains what he calls Pascal’s Law of Pressure. He also finishes The Generation of Conic Sections. 

Age 31 – Blaise writes the Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle which describes a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients. Through his correspondence with a friend, the theory of probabilities is also born. This will eventually be called Pascal’s Triangle in the future. After a religious experience though, Blaise gives up Mathematics, converts fully to Jensenism and joins his sister at the convent. 

Age 32 – He releases a series of pamphlets called the Provincial Letters poking fun of the Jesuits. They are popular and the Jesuits try to hunt down the author but are unable to.

Age 35 – He works on solving the problems of volume and surface area of the cycloid. 

Age 36 – He becomes seriously ill and from then on spends his last years giving to the poor and going from church to church to attend services. 

Age 39 – Blaise dies in great pain after a growth in his stomach spreads to the brain. Unfinished and unpublished works of his are released, including more mathematical theorems and a piece of work called the Pensées that defends the Christian religion, in which he tries to prove that belief in God is rational by writing “If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing.” This will come to be known as Pascal’s wager.

Much later – The computer programming language ‘Pascal’ is named after him to honour his contributions to the beginnings of computing. The SI unit of pressure and an important principle of hydrostatics is also named after him. His theory of probability eventually becomes important in economics too. 

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Photographs: Public Domain. Compiler: Sy
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Malala Yousafzai was banned from going to school at age 11 but ended up getting into Oxford University at age 20. This is the story of the young girl who survived being shot by the Taliban and used her experience to devote her life to advocate for the education of girls all around the world.

1997 – Malala Yousafzai is born at home in Mingora, Pakistan—a tourist spot known for its summer festivals. Her father is an educator and owner of a chain of private schools. She will later have 2 younger brothers and 2 pet chickens.

Age 10 – Taliban forces begin fighting the Pakistani Army in a battle for the Swat Valley area of Pakistan which Mingora is a part of. 

Shortly after – The Taliban gains control of most of the Swat Valley and begin banning women from going to school or the shops, along with banning television and music for everybody. Malala gives a speech titled “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” in response to it. 

Age 11 – Her father is asked by the BBC to get one of his students to blog about being a schoolgirl under the Taliban’s control. He can’t find any other students willing to do so so he offers his own daughter. She begins blogging for the BBC about what it’s like living with Taliban’s threats to deny girls their education. She goes by the name Gul Makai for it. 

Age 12 – After her BBC diary ends, she and her family are approached by the New York Times to be filmed in a documentary. In the meanwhile, the war in Swat Valley leads to Mingora being evacuated. Malala moves to the countryside to live with relatives. After the documentary, she is interviewed by more people for more television shows. She begins to publicly advocate for female education. 

Age 14 – Malala is nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize and wins Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Her family starts getting death threats from the Taliban but they do not actually believe that the Taliban would harm a child.  

Age 15 – She is shot by a gunman when on the way home from school in a bus. The bullet goes into the left of her head and travels down her neck. She is flown to a military hospital in Peshawar in critical condition. Her skull is removed to help her swelling brain. She is then flown to England for more care while in a medically-induced coma. She survives after more surgeries. The Pakistani government pays for all of her treatment. She gets worldwide recognition after outrage brews over the incident. 

Age 16 – She starts going to school in England. She also gives a speech to the United Nations and publishes her first book, I Am Malala. Her birthday is now known as Malala Day around the world. She wins the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She launches the Malala Fund with her father which works to make sure girls around the world have access to education for 12 years. 

Age 17 – She wins the Nobel Peace Prize for surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. 

Age 18 – She opens a school in Lebanon for Syrian refugee girls. A documentary on her, He Named Me Malala, is released. She receives 6 A*s and 4 As for her GCSE O-Levels and 3 As for her A-Levels. In the meantime, in Pakistan, her book I Am Malala is banned in all private schools and her father is denounced as a traitor and an agent of the west.

Age 20 – She gets honorary Canadian citizenship—the youngest person to be awarded that in history. She publishes Malala’s Magic Pencil, a picture book about her childhood in Pakistan. She goes to Oxford to study philosophy, politics and economics.

Age 21 – She returns to Pakistan for the first time since being shot and meets with the Prime Minister to deliver a speech at his office. The next day, the group representing private schools in Pakistan organises an “I am not Malala Day”. She publishes “We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World.” 

2020 – Malala is presently 23 years old and is still a student at Oxford. 

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Photographs: Claude Truong-Ngo. Compiler: Sy
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