Every student has a hero who has a great influence on his or her life.Have a guess who my hero is?Hou Yifan.Read the article and find out who she is!
In 2020, people around the world were impressed by the chess prodigy（天才）Beth Harmon in The Queen's Gambit（《后翼弃兵》）.However, there's a s "queen of chess" in real life—28-year-old Hou Yifan.
Hou started playing chess at 5 years old in 1999.At that time, her parents took Hou to try different brain games at a training center. "With the interesting shapes, I was attracted by the c and decided to take it up, " said Hou.
After playing for two years as a hobby, Hou met her c —grandmaster Tong Yuanming— and took up professional training.
"Chess is a mind game full of u possibilities.Even when there are only five or six pieces l on the board, you have to think it over and cannot calculate（计算）all the variations, " said Hou. "So instead of too much focus on theories, we should rely more on practice and strategy（策略）."
Learning strategies from previous competitions and practising chess quickly became her daily life.Luckily, her e were soon rewarded.At 13, she became China's youngest ever National Women's Champion and then became the youngest chess champion in the world at 16. A the famous chess star was known all over the world, Hou always stayed modest. "I'm happy to win these titles, but I know this is a coin w two sides, " Hou added. "As you attract public a , your faults are amplified（放大）.So I should shrug（抛开）the honors off and stay motivated to keep improving."
"I have to know more, " she said. "I have to open my eyes to see the whole world." Now, the 28-year-old has become a teacher at Shenzhen University.She wants to "bring the method she learned in China and the West together and a international chess to reach more young Chinese people".
