A woman who became China's first female tractor driver, and eventually a national icon, has died at the age of 90.

In 1948, Liang Jun became the only female in China to take up the job, when she enrolled in a training class for tractor drivers.

More than a decade later, an image of her proudly driving a tractor was featured on China's one-yuan banknote.

"No-one could drive as well as me," she had said in an earlier interview. "I have no regrets in this life."

Liang Jun was born in 1930 to a poor family in China's remote Heilongjiang province.

She spent most of her early years helping out at a farm as well as studying in a rural school.

In 1948, when a local school opened up a course to train tractor drivers, she seized her chance.

In previous eras in China, nobles, poets and military leaders were the ones to admire. But when the communists took power in 1949, a new kind of hero was born - the modelworker, a concept already in use in the Soviet Union.

The Chinese state promoted poor, hard-working individuals whose dedication to building a socialist country was held up for others to follow.

Liang Jun was one of the first, and one of the best known, model workers. Her smiling face as she drives her tractor on the one yuan banknote was supposed to inspire others tosimilar heights of achievement.

It was not just class barriers she broke down either. Liang Jun became a symbol for all Chinese women, and the possibilities that now opened up for them. She herself made fulluse of those opportunities. She became an engineer and a politician; a long journey from an impoverished childhood.

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Liang Jun: China's first female tractor driver, and national icon, dies(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51116035)