中国大陆学生首登哈佛毕业典礼演讲台

“从中国边远农村一个传统的农民家庭走出来成为哈佛毕业生是一条很长很长的路。”当地时间5月26日，哈佛大学第365届毕业典礼在哈佛最古老的校园区Harvard Yard里举行。今年的毕业典礼备受中国青年学生和家长关注，因为一位来自中国的毕业生何江作为优秀毕业生代表发言，这是哈佛大学给予毕业生的最高荣誉。

When a poisonous spider bit a young Jiang He on the hand, his mother put a chopstick in his mouth, wrapped his hand in wine-soaked cotton, and set the cotton on fire.

当一只毒蜘蛛咬了小何江的手时，妈妈在她嘴里塞了一根筷子，把用酒浸过的棉布裹在他手上，把棉布点燃。

As Jiang explained in his speech, there is some scientific basis for this folk remedy, the only kind available in his native village in China’s Hunan Province. Nevertheless, the searing pain he felt that day drove Jiang to seek out more modern answers in biochemistry.

何江在演讲中说，这个土方子有那么点科学道理，这是他湖南农村唯一的治疗办法。然而，钻心的疼痛让他开始寻求生物化学领域更为现代的答案。

It was a long way to graduate school at Harvard from the remote, rural village where Jiang grew up in a traditional farming family. The village didn’t get electricity until the 1990s, and the Jiangs continued using oil lamps to save money. They and their neighbors dug their own wells for drinking water.

从中国边远农村一个传统的农民家庭走出来成为哈佛毕业生是一条很长的路。村子里九十年代才通电，他们家还一直煤油灯省电。他们和邻里靠挖井取水。

“Educational resources were also limited,” said Jiang. He and his brother walked 90 minutes over mountainous terrain to their cheaply built school, which once collapsed in a rainstorm. The math teacher was moonlighting from his primary job as a butcher.

“教育资源也很匮乏。”他和哥哥走90分钟的山路去一座破烂小学，小学曾在一场暴雨中倒塌。数学老师的主业是屠夫。

“Back then, I could never imagine myself getting out and studying at places like Harvard,” Jiang said. He’d never set foot in a city or used a computer when, in 2005, he entered college, the first in his family to do so.

“那时候，我根本想象不到有一天我能走出来，在哈佛这样的地方读书。”2005年上大学时，他从来没进过城，也没用过电脑。他是家里第一个上大学的人。

Jiang, who earned his Harvard Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology, recently became a postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with his name on studies in The Journal of Cell Biology, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, and other scholarly periodicals.

获得哈佛分子与细胞生物学博士学位的何江现在在麻省理工大学读博士后，在《细胞生物学期刊》、《实验医学期刊》和其他学术期刊上发表过文章。

His research at Harvard focused on developing single-molecule imaging techniques and applying them to the study of biological processes, especially flu virus infection.

他在哈佛研究单分子影像技术，并将之运用于生物学过程研究，尤其是流感病毒感染。

More generally, Jiang wants to bring advances in medicine to underserved communities such as the one he came from. He hopes the newly minted scientists and doctors in the audience at Commencement will think about how to do the same.

总的来说，他想让医疗条件不足的地区能取得医疗进展，例如他的家乡。他希望听众中的新晋科学家和医生也想想能做点什么。

“I have experienced the drastic contrasts of rural and modern life, and have seen how knowledge and technology are unequally distributed,” Jiang said.

“我经历过农村生活和现代生活的强烈差距，认识到知识和技术的分布如此不均。”

“We could easily help so many people in the underdeveloped world by sharing and communicating the knowledge we have in the modern world to these people. That really motivated me to write the speech and bring this message to the others. [I hope] to trigger Harvard graduates to rethink our mission as we start our next voyage.”

“我们可以向他们分享和传播现代世界的知识，轻松地帮助不发达世界的很多人。这激励了我写下这篇演讲，让大家知道这一点。我希望能让哈佛毕业生在开始另一段征程前，重新思考自己的使命。”

讲者简介

何江是哈佛大学生物系博士毕业生，本科毕业于中国科技大学。硕士和博士均毕业于哈佛大学，现在MIT作博士后。这次哈佛的毕业演讲并不是何江第一次代表优秀学生发言，从中科大毕业时，他曾获得学校的最高荣誉奖——郭沫若奖学金，并作为获奖代表发言。