杨澜TED演讲中英文对照

The night before I was heading for Scotland, I was invited to host the final of "China's Got Talent" show in Shanghai with the 80,000 live audience in the stadium. Guess who was the performing guest? Susan Boyle. And I told her, "I'm going to Scotland the next day." She sang beautifully, and she even managed to say a few words in Chine: 送你葱 So it's not like "hello" or "thank you," that o青瓜 rdinary stuff. It means "gr石榴怎么选 een onion for free." Why did she say that? Becau it was a line from our Chine parallel Susan Boyle -- a 50-some year-old woman, a vegetable vendor in Shanghai, who loves singing Western opera, but she didn't understand any English or French or Italian, so she managed to fill in the lyrics with vegetable names in Chine. (Laughter) And the last ntence of Nessun Dorma that she was singing in the stadium was "green onion for free." So [as] Susan Boyle was saying that, 80,000 live audience sang together. That was hilarious.

So I guess both Susan Boyle and this vegetable vendor in Shanghai belonged to otherness. They were the least expected to be successful in the business called entertainm

ent, yet their courage and talent brought them through. And a show and a platform gave them the stage to realize their dreams. Well, being different is not that difficult. We are all different from different perspectives. But I think being different is good, becau you prent a different point of view. You may have the chance to make a difference.

My generation has been ve忆江南白居易古诗三首 ry fortunate to witness and participate in the historic transformation of China that has made so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. I remember that in the year of 1990, when I was graduating from college, I was applying for a job in the sales department of the first five-star hotel in Beijing, Great Wall Sheraton -- it's still there. So after being interrogated by this Japane manager for a half an hour, he finally said, "So, Miss Yang, do you have any questions to ask me?" I summoned my courage and poi and said, "Yes, but could you let me know, what actually do you ll?" I didn't have a clue what a sales department was about in a five-star hotel. That was the first day I t my foot in a five-star hotel.

Around the same time, I was going through an audition -- the first ever open audition by n

ational television in China -- with another thousand college girls. The producer told us they were looking for some sweet, innocent and beautiful fresh face. So when it was my turn, I stood up and said, "Why [do] women's personalities on television always have to be beautiful, sweet, innocent and, you know, supportive? Why can't they have their own ideas and their own voice?" I thought I kind of offended them. But actually, they were impresd by my words. And so I was in the cond round of competition, and then the third and the fourth. After ven rounds of competition, I was the last one to survive it. So I was on a national television prime-time show. And believe it or not, that was the first show on Chine television that allowed its hosts to speak out of their own minds without reading an approved script.双鱼和白羊 (Applau) And my weekly audience at that time was between 200 to 300 million people.

Well after a few years, I decided to go to the U.S. and Columbia University to pursue my postgraduate studies, and then started my own media company, which was unthought of during the years that I started my career. So we do a lot of things. I've interviewed more than a thousand people in the past. And sometimes I have young people approaching me

say, "Lan, you changed my life," and I feel proud of that. But then we are also so fortunate to witness the transformation of the whole country. I was in Beijinredical g's bidding for the Olympic Games. I was reprenting the Shanghai Expo. I saw China embracing the world and vice versa. But then sometimes I'm thinking, what are today's young generation up to? How are they different, and what are the differences they are going to make to shape the future of China, or at large, the world?

So today I want to talk about young people through the platform of social media. First of all, who are they? [What] do they look like? Well this is a girl called Guo Meimei -- 20 years old, beautiful. She showed off her expensive bags, clothes and car on her microblog, which is the Chine version of Twitter. And she claimed to be the general manager of Red Cross at the Chamber of Commerce. She didn't realize that she stepped on a nsitive nerve and aroud national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of Red Cross. The controversy was so heated that the Red Cross had to open a press conference to clarify it, and the investigation is going on.

So far, as of today, we know that she herlf made up that title -- probably becau she feels proud to be associated with charity. All tho expensive items were given to her as gifts by her boyfriend, who ud to be a board member in a subdivision of Red Cross at Chamber of Commerce. It's very complicated to explain. But anyway, the public still doesn't buy it. It is still boiling. It shows us a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions, which lacked transparency in the past. And also it showed us the power and the impact of social media as microblog.