In the 1980s, when Li Zhongjian saw an expensive overseas-made cigarette lighter, he had the foresight to figure out how to make it in his home city of Wenzhou in East China's Zhejiang province. Li formed a company - something very rare in China then - to make the lighters, initially for the domestic market.
Thirty years ago, Deng Xiaoping set out an economic vision which seemed astonishing - a 70-year policy to transform China into an advanced economy. However, the targets for its first 30 years have already been exceeded and China's economic achievements are probably the most extraordinary in world history.
When I first saw China Daily in June 1981, I mistook it for a foreign newspaper. And it still puzzles me how my English teacher at a high school in the small town of Nanyang in Henan province, about 1,000 kilometers from Beijing, learned about the newspaper and had become one of its earliest subscribers. Unlike today, news and information then traveled at snail's pace.