While Dr Jane Goodall is known for her adoration of primates, which eventually blossomed into a life mission to create a better world for all living things, one of her most beloved creatures with opposable thumbs is not exactly a primate or a living thing.

But where she goes, so too goes Mr H.

During her two-week visit to China, which ended on Monday, the chimpanzee researcher shared with audiences the story of the stuffed monkey given to her 16 years ago as a birthday gift by Gary Horne. Horne totally lost his sight in a helicopter crash at age 21, but went on to become a mountain climber and skydiver, who, on occasion, also swims with great white sharks.

"He's that kind of guy," she told several dozen chronic-leukemia survivors at Shanghai's Gezhi High School, on Friday.

While growing accustomed to his new dark world, Gary met a magician and decided he wanted to become one, too.

"Everybody said to him, 'Gary you can't be a good magician if you can't see'. He said, 'Well, I can try'. If you saw him perform in front of you today, you'd never know he was blind."

Horne does shows for children, she explains, revealing that he can't see at the end. "He tells them, 'Things may go wrong in your life, but never give up'," Goodall says.

It's a theme pertinent to the humanitarian and environmental advocate's mission to "change the world".

The audience of cancer survivors receives assistance from Home for Hope, a program of the Shanghai office of the nonprofit Roots & Shoots. She initiated the environmental and humanitarian organization in 1991, when she began expanding her fight to save the chimpanzees she was observing into a global vision of improving of the condition of everything alive.

"You give me another reason for hope," Goodall tells the crowd, congratulating them on their second chance on life.

Her latest trip to China was part of her global tour that has continued since 1986 - she hasn't been in one place for more than three consecutive weeks since then. This month she's celebrating the 50th anniversary of the beginning of her chimpanzee research in Tanzania's Gombe National Park.

She first traveled to Beijing, where the central government gave her a lifetime achievement award, and then to Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu, where the Chengdu Panda Base declared her a "lifetime ambassador of the giant panda". She spent her last few days in Shanghai before flying to South Korea.

In the coastal municipality, she attended a book signing, and visited schools and the World Expo's Coca-Cola Pavilion.

At the Expo, she spoke about the importance of corporate social responsibility, as Coca-Cola Bottlers Manufacturing (Dongguan) Co, Shanghai Branch has voluntarily offset its carbon footprint by donating more than 100,000 trees to the Shanghai Roots & Shoots' Million Tree Project. Since 2007, the campaign has planted more than 400,000 hybrid poplars to reverse the desertification of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region's Kulun Banner. And the branch raised enough money at Sunday night's Friends of Jane Goodall event to plant 23,026 more.

Goodall sipped wax-melon juice from a students' organic garden from the bio-farm booth of Shanghai American School as she toured a festival for Roots & Shoots international school students, where hundreds of children set up dozens of displays showcasing their projects.

"I go to these festivals all over the world and what's really the most remarkable thing is I get the same sort of enthusiasm," Goodall tells China Daily. "That's perhaps the most encouraging of all. We really are a family of man."

Goodall, who has become something of a rock star, had to be surrounded by volunteers who joined hands in a circle around her to keep the fair's crowds from pressing in too close on her.

She stopped at every booth for photos with the children, saying "chimpanzee" rather than "cheese" when posing for snapshots.

Dulwich College Suzhou Roots & Shoots member Annie Ning, 12, says meeting her idol was inspiring.

"We're proud of what we've done. It's so fun and it makes us want to do more," Ning says.

Shanghai Experimental School teacher Ren Jie says she was also inspired by Goodall's answer to her question about how to make children care about the environment: "Follow your heart."