Dr. Rebecca Lee

To many people who want to travel around the world, Mount Qomolangma, the North Pole and the South Pole are places they may dream of but will never set foot on.

But to Dr. Rebecca Lee, a world-renowned explorer from Hong Kong, the three extreme locations are only a few stops on her journey around the world.

In her quest for adventure, Lee started traveling around the world in 1970 and she has visited more than 100 countries and regions worldwide since then.

She joined eight expeditions to the North Pole, five to the South Pole and climbed up Mount Qomolangma three times.

"I thank God for giving me so many opportunities to travel around the world," Lee said in an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday. She was in Beijing attending the Chinese Women's Ninth National Congress, scheduled to close Tuesday.

Over the past 18 years, Lee had worked as an advertisement designer, a photographer, a painter and now a polar scientist.

Lee first jointed a Chinese expedition team to explore Antarctica in 1985 and became the first woman in Hong Kong to set foot on the ice-covered continent.

Later, she participated in and organized several scientific expeditions to the North and South poles and Mount Qomolangma, sponsored by the Chinese mainland or Hong Kong.

"In front of the great nature, human beings are so insignificant, and we should never say that we've conquered nature, " Lee said.

"Human beings are the children of the great nature, who will end up being conquered by nature if they try to conquer nature. Destruction of the environment is actually destroying the present and the future of mankind," she wrote in her newly-published picture album on the three polar areas.

Out of her reverence for nature, Lee poured all the money she earned from selling her houses and from her advertisement design company into the study of the North and South poles and into the exploration of environmental protection methods.

Initiated by Lee, the China Polar Museum Foundation was established in 1997. The foundation was designed to promote the establishment of China's polar museum and development of an information network and data bank for polar environmental protection.

Having experienced many storms and avalanches and seen the deaths of her exploring partners, Lee focuses on what she wants to and can do instead of death.
"Life is tender, so do what you want to do and you will have no regrets when death comes," she said.

Over the years, Lee gave lectures for over 300,000 Chinese students, sharing with them her adventures, her contributions to promoting environmental protection and the latest scientific research achievements.

Lee spends half a year in Hong Kong and another half traveling around the world. In her eyes, the most enjoyable thing of life is that a person can choose what he or she wants to do.

She considers herself lucky enough to have achieved what she wanted to be: a polar explorer.

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