He opened China's first wheelchair skateboarding center

Xie Junwu has opened what is almost certainly China's first wheelchair skateboarding training center, in his home city of Nanchang. He teaches from a chair he has spent two decades learning to defy. At 19, Xie fell from a tree during a geology internship and damaged his thoracic vertebrae, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He stayed home for eight years without once going outside alone. His mother cared for him. Her death in 2000 turned his promise of independence into something he could no longer put off. In 2004, he watched someone balance a wheelchair on its back wheels and decided to copy it. Many falls followed. By 2012, he held a Guinness World Record for the longest wheelchair wheelie, 25.8 kilometers. He has since summited Mount Huangshan four times and finished 32 marathons. Now he wants to hold China's first wheelchair skateboard competition. He calls it a "small goal I'm pursuing."