Hi, everyone, I’m Yaqi ZHANG, and my friends call me Sophie. I am a sixth grade elementary student in the Primary School Attached to Northeast Normal University.

Many people say that I look like my parents. I want to ask, can you figure out who is my father just from look at me? One clue, he works at CIOMP.

2022 is a special year. First, it is the year of Tiger, my animal year. 2022 is also the year of the Winter Olympic Games, which was held in Beijing. The Chinese delegation won the most gold medals in its history. 2022 is a challenging year for our Jilin Province. In many parts of Jilin, we were locked down in our homes for almost 2 months because of the corona virus, but we finally beat it.

More importantly, 2022 is the 70th anniversary of CIOMP’s founding. Known as the Cradle of China Optics, CIOMP is very meaningful to my father and all his colleagues. Happy birthday to CIOMP. And I am honored to be here today to share my story with CIOMP.

Where shall I start? I racked my brains for a long time, the first thing came to me is the name, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is so difficult for a child to remember. And the Chinese name is 中国科学院长春光学精密机械与物理研究所, OK……, I prefer to say it in English. However, when my father explained the background of the name, and introduced the great contributions CIOMP had made to the development of Chinese science and technology, I finally made it.

Discrimination VS Friendliness
In 2014, CIOMP had participated the Thirty Meter Telescope Plan (they call it TMT for short) for 4 years. So my mother and I got the opportunity to visit Arcadia in Los Angeles as my father was a visiting scholar there. Los Angeles is a wonderful place, constant sunshine, the Pacific Ocean and the coastline, Disneyland, world famous universities.

I went to a Montessori kindergarten and elementary school when I was in the U.S. There, children of different races played and learned together, Chinese American, Mexican American, Korean American and Native American. It’s funny that we communicated in English to each other and spoke our native languages when our parents picked us up. However, not everything was going smoothly. One of my classmates talked the other children in the class into isolating me. Even worse, the head of the school didn’t try to figure things out, but just told me that I should apologize. How ridiculous, it really hurt me!

On the other hand, the experts from TMT were very nice to my family. I still remember Ginny, a lovely old lady who invited us to her farm and took us out on her yacht. She told me that CIOMP staffs were friendly and treated TMT partners well. The senior faculties there were professional and strongly supportive, and the young fellows were eager to learn and could learn fast. Although I didn’t know the details of the collaboration, I believed that CIOMP scientists like my father must have done a good job which earned them the respect of their U.S. colleagues.

JPL Open House Day VS CIOMP’s
While in California, we usually spent our weekend visiting science or art centers, amusement parks, famous universities, such as the California Science Center, Disneyland and Lego Land, UCLA and Stanford University. The environment, architectures and atmosphere were really amazing to me. And the JPL Open House Day impressed me the most. JPL is a national lab of the U.S., which focuses on the development of space science and technology. On the Open House Day, Americans and foreigners from all over the country could visit for free. It attracted thousands of people every time. You could assemble model spacecrafts, explore the universe, and let the Mars rover climb on your back. It was fun for everybody. When we were there, I asked my father, why don’t we have this kind of activity at home? And I never expected that I could participate in CIOMP’s Open House Day one day.

Maybe my father remember my question, maybe CIOMP needed a chance to meet the public. My father with his department got the funding to hold CIOMP Open House Day in the summer of 2015. It included several parts, celebrating the year of light, 100th anniversary of Prof. Wang Daheng’s birth, optoelectronic products show, academicians’ presentations, seed of light, lab tour. Some of the activities were interactive, such as the optic experiment, laser writing, UAV show. The staff and volunteers there were nice, patient and thoughtful. Dad told me that more than 2,000 people took part; some of them came all the way from Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces.

Now, I understand better what CIOMP has achieved in its 70 years. She trained thousands of talents, completed hundreds of national projects. All the achievements and contributions are inseparable from the dedication of generations of CIOMP researchers. I am so proud that my father works at CIOMP, with so many other experts, and so close to top-level technology.

Finally, I would say, as a child or a youth, I will take my responsibility and put in the hard work, not only for my parents and myself, but also for the rise of our great country.