Last week, four young people became the first students from China to receive a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, which began selecting candidates from the Middle Kingdom for the first time this year.

Chinese media has celebrated the news, calling the scholarship — which funds graduate-level study at Oxford — the “world’s hardest-to-get” and the “Nobel Prize” of academic awards. The scholarship is being funded in China with donations from the Hong Kong-based Li Ka Shing Foundation, among other sources.

China Real Time chatted with one of the four, Tsinghua University student Ren Naying, about the scholarship, her advocacy on behalf of gay students on campus and her views on China’s so-called “Feminist Five,” who were taken into custody earlier this year while planning to protest sexual harassment on public transportation. Read more via the Wall Street Journal