Thirteen years ago, many Chinese teachers already recognized the importance of science and technology education. Innovation and creativity are crucial for students in the 21st century. However, our teachers did not know how to incorporate creativity into their daily exam-based traditional classrooms. After-school science and technology projects for interested students were limited to car and airplane modeling.

That changed with the arrival of FIRST LEGO League. Students and teachers alike were all intrigued by the challenge of designing an autonomous robot that could solve 14 missions on Mars − everyone wanted to be part of that! In fewer than three years, under the organization of China's Science and Technology Association, we got all 30 of China's provinces embracing FIRST.