Runqing is a Ph.D. candidate in Second Language Acquisition. Both her undergraduate and graduate studies have been focused on teaching Chinese as a second language (L2). She has always loved this career of being a teacher of Chinese language and culture. She strives to make her classes not only educational but also motivating and related to students’ personal goals. Runqing started to learn Spanish in college and speaks it on a regular basis, which is similar to her students’ path to learning Chinese. This allows her to put herself into her students’ shoes and make her teaching more empathetic. She also enjoys a continuous dialogue between teaching and research. She consults the literature and applies research-based recommendations to her teaching. When there are no satisfactory answers in the literature, she further explores the topic by conducting her own research. A case in point is the absence of research on using authentic texts in lower-level Chinese L2 instruction. Therefore, in her dissertation, she proposed, implemented, and revised an instructional model for integrating discourse-length authentic texts into intermediate-level Chinese L2 reading classrooms. Besides teaching and studying, Runqing loves reading novels, playing piano and erhu (a Chinese traditional musical instrument), chatting with her mom, and cooking with her husband.