Shen Liying, female, originally named Jiahui, born in Wuzhen, is a world-renowned Chinese agronomist who has made outstanding contributions to wheat breeding. Her grandfather is good at steaming and calculating, and he has been in charge of the dialect hall for decades. Her father Chengyi, also known as Boxin, holds a PhD in Law from the University of Paris in France.

In 1921, Shen Liying graduated from Shenzhou Girls' High School and taught at Suzhou Zhenhua Girls' School for three years. She studied abroad in the United States and studied botany at the Women's University of Wales, earning a Bachelor of Science degree, and returned to Cornell University to study agriculture for two years. During his time in the United States, when listening to the professor's introduction of the world's academic progress, the professor listed the names and nationalities of academic experts to encourage students from various countries. The names of the countries mentioned were numerous, but only China was not mentioned. Li Ying was deeply touched and determined to devote herself to science and serve the motherland.

In 1917, she returned to China and initially served as an agricultural technician at the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Construction, engaged in research on improving rice and wheat varieties. In 1923, she was appointed as the Technical Director of the Central Agricultural Experimental Institute. Afterwards, she went to Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou and other places to test wheat hybrid breeding. The selected nine excellent wheat varieties had a yield per mu that was 40 to 100 kilograms higher than local wheat, and had a wide range of suitable varieties with strong disease resistance. The maturity period is advanced by 5 to 10 days, and it can not hinder the early sowing of rice. Among them, "Zhongnong 18#" was a comparative experiment conducted from over 1700 wheat varieties around the world. After seven years of unremitting efforts, it has been selected and cultivated. This excellent variety is disease resistant, early maturing, high-yield, and of excellent quality, suitable for China, especially in provinces such as Sichuan, Hubei, Guizhou, and Shaanxi. Since 1926, it has been widely promoted, and the average yield per mu of  three-year comparative experiment in Chengdu was 41 kilograms higher than that of local wheat, achieving great success.

Shen Liying was engaged in scientific research, had insight, perseverance, precision and diligence, and was tireless. She often walked barefoot in the mud amidst heavy rain and wind, inspecting the crops tested one by one. During the Anti Japanese War, all female employees were dissolved by the Central Ministry of Agriculture. Du Liying firmly refused to leave and earnestly expressed her willingness that she wanted to stay to complete the experiment without a salary. She said, "I work for my career, not for money." When the government retreated from Nanjing, she led her three children into exile as pregnant woman, and she still carried years of experimental records and seed boxes, and traveled thousands of miles from Ningxia to Hunan to Guizhou to arrive in Rongchang County, Sichuan. On the way, she often said that "During the Anti Japanese War, a drop of gasoline is a drop of blood for the people", and she refused to hire a car and stumbled on the Shu Road. In 1928, she suffered from severe leg pain and endured pain with tears, never abandoning her duty. Every time there was a harvest in the field, she must observe and record the characteristics of the crops, forgetting her pain.

Shen Liying worked hard in the hills and the laboratory all day long, and broke down from overwork. On October 7, 1941, she had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and died in Rongchang Central Agricultural Laboratory at the age of only forty. After her death, the national government explicitly praised it, and all walks of life in Chongqing mourned deeply. Feng Yuxiang, Mr. and Mrs. Li Dequan, Deng Yingchao, Deng Chumin, Zhang Shenfu, Shi Liang and Xie Bingxin went to offer their condolences. Dong Biwu made a five-character poem mourning; Deng Yingchao and Bing Xin wrote articles to miss; Fei Xiaotong, her student, expressed his reverence for his teacher with an Unopened Letter - In Memory of My Teacher Mr. Shen Liying.

Shen Liying has 22 kinds of works, most of which are translated into British and American journals of crop breeding and biology, and are often cited by scholars from all over the world. Therefore, Qian Tianhe, a famous agronomist, said, "Mr. Liying is a rare scientist in the agricultural field, and her status is so high that few people can keep pace with her today."

Liying's husband, Dr. Shen Zonghan, is also a famous agricultural expert and director of the Central Agricultural Laboratory. They have four children, and the eldest son Junshan was only nine years old when Li Ying died.