A speech by a professor from Zhejiang University

It’s based on something else, haha. The original text reads: “In China, which is a developing country, you can build 10 world-class universities. How many does the United States have? How many does Japan have? The reality is that China doesn’t have a single university among the top 200 universities in the world! How many are there in Asia? After going abroad, I realized that making Zhejiang University a world-class university is like an idealistic goal.” " 　　 “Previously it was said that ‘ignorance breeds fearlessness’, but now it is ‘only ignorance leads to fearlessness’. Many companies invite officials from the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Technical Supervision and the Science and Technology Commission for a meal and some drinks; they will then sign something for you. They also force us professors to go there to put our signatures as well, and then they claim to have ‘filled a gap at home and abroad’ or that their achievements are at an ‘internationally advanced level’. When writing a paper, it would be things like ‘research results at the international leading level’, ‘first scientific discovery’, and so on. These are all very serious problems at the moment! As a university professor, I am deeply concerned about this! It is not our responsibility; it is our leaders who are ignorant, as they are the ones who have promoted this mainstream perspective. I know that the directors and managers here have a tough time, because without preparing such reports, they can’t get paid and their projects won’t be approved. The same is true for professors – they spend their days writing reports instead of focusing on conducting research in the laboratory. This is a serious problem! 　　 “This is the reality and the way things develop in our country: for anything that cannot be achieved through reliance on others, we manage to handle it on our own, like with the development of nuclear weapons and satellites. But for anything that could be imported, we fail to do so... Many joint ventures these days operate in the same way – they just sell products without considering these deeper issues.” What they don’t realize is that this is a vicious cycle in society! ” ” I believe that language and computers are just tools. Chinese foreign language teachers can’t speak English even as well as American vegetable sellers! What’s your opinion on this? There are many Japanese doctors and German professors who can’t speak English! How can we say that someone who can’t speak English is illiterate? Language is just a tool! If you don’t have the right environment, how can one speak that language? ...If I were the education minister, I would reform two things: First, abolish the CET-6 exam. You, as a graduate student, can’t even pass the Chinese proficiency test at level one; then what’s the point of taking the English CET-6 exam? Look at the papers written by graduate students – they don’t even have a good grasp of their own cultural heritage, yet they keep taking English exams: checkmarks for TOEFL, checkmarks for GRE, high scores in English tests. But which of the papers written in English can pass my scrutiny? None of them can! What can people trained in this way do? They haven’t even mastered their own field properly!... To say that someone who doesn’t know computers is illiterate is another misconception! I’m a professor now; I don’t have time to deal with computers!” “Look at me – I’ve been studying English since high school, in college, for my master’s degree, and for my doctorate. How much effort has that required! How can Chinese people produce high-tech research results? These past few days I’ve been reprimanding some of my female students, asking what they’re doing. There’s no sign of them around; they’re busy taking tests all day long. What’s the point of going to the United States? There are so many things to do back home! You spend all your time taking English tests, while in the U.S., they charge you money just to register, and the same is true in Japan. Chinese students who go to Japan have to pay fees; they go there to work for the Japanese, earn some money to pay for their tuition, and after completing their doctorate, they end up working in Japanese companies as laborers. After earning some money, they return to China, buy household appliances, and give all that money to the Japanese.” None of you have paid attention to this; it’s all about economic issues. This is what quality education really is. " 　 　“Education in primary and secondary schools focuses on obedience: teachers manage the administrators, and the administrators manage the students, so the children learn adult-style ways of behaving. This is harmful! After forcing oneself to do some good deeds in this way, those good deeds are not combined with moral principles for personal development; instead, one only learns how to flatter others, please teachers, and speak in a manner that satisfies adults. It was shown on TV once before – a child won an award, and the host asked him what he wanted to say most. He replied, “I want to say to Grandpa Jiang: I’m reporting to you!” Who is “Grandpa Jiang”? It’s something taught by teachers! Children are very busy in primary and secondary school, but once they get to university, no one pays attention to them anymore, so they start to have fun and fall in love. " 　　 “Many of our classmates have good grades, but they can’t do anything. In our university, for people at my level, academic grades are never taken into consideration when recruiting doctoral students – what do grades matter! In the field I work in now, there are three outstanding experts in China; all of them had to retake exams during their graduate studies, while those who scored well ended up going to the United States to sell traditional Chinese medicine. What does this tell us? A boss should not act in this way!... The talent structure must be well organized; one shouldn’t assume that professors or doctors are infallible. China’s education system is designed to fill every citizen with hope and ideals, teaching children to set lofty goals for themselves. In fact, people’s abilities vary. Those who are good at sweeping should also be respected ； Cleaning the toilets thoroughly is a task that deserves respect; there’s no need to require a high level of education for it. I want to remind you: it’s not like this abroad. It’s very difficult for doctors from the United States and Japan to find jobs. Why? Because employers are concerned about costs – they have to pay high salaries to hire doctors, but what value do these doctors actually bring? It’s a practical issue. “What should technology be used for? What purpose should high-tech serve? If I were the Minister of Science and Technology, I would just focus on doing what matters, just like Chen Jingrun; he simply focused on his work! If Chen Jingrun were in today’s China, he would definitely be forced to beg for a living, because he wouldn’t know how to pursue industrial applications. His English isn’t good, his speech isn’t fluent, and his Chinese is also poor. By today’s standards, he would be considered illiterate – how can he even be a professor? The Japanese like Americans; I tell the Japanese that whoever they love will end up having atomic bombs thrown at them.” Japanese people just like blacks and not Chinese people... I specifically told our female professors and classmates: Don’t speak a single word of Japanese in front of Japanese people, not even if you know how to speak it ； It’s true! As soon as Japanese people hear that you can speak English, especially when they see a Chinese girl doing so, their legs go weak! ” “Why have the Chinese been leaving their country over the years? The most important thing is to make the people love themselves…… If I were the mayor of Hangzhou, I certainly wouldn’t act out of narrow national pride – if anything happened to Hangzhou, I would first place its residents in Shangri-La, while letting foreigners wait outside! (Applause!) Only in this way can you make your people love themselves! If a Japanese farmer goes to Mount Emei and breaks a bone, you use Chinese Air Force helicopters to rescue him, whereas in Japan, a Chinese student dies in his dormitory and it takes 7 days before anyone notices.” ； A Chinese doctoral couple and their child at Nagoya University accidentally consumed poisonous mushrooms; the child and the mother died, while the father suffered from severe hepatitis. He waited for 12 hours in the outpatient clinic of Nagoya University School of Medicine, yet not a single Japanese professor came to see him! And why do you still act so friendly, thinking you’re generous? In reality, you’re being laughed at for your ignorance! You people!* We can’t allow this to happen! Our leaders go abroad on visits, and just by seeing a few people welcome them, they feel proud ； And whenever some important figure from abroad arrives, police cars open the way for them – what on earth is going on here? Does this make us Chinese feel proud or sad? All of these are profound issues related to education. That’s why I often say that as a scientist in the natural sciences, when teaching my students, I first teach them how to be good people. Without these, studying polymers and foreign languages is nothing but superficial. "

The scholarly spirit of discussing issues and writing impassioned words – it’s a pity he can’t change anything; the only thing he can change is himself. . .

Such words will soon be drowned out in a country as magical as this! !

This post was last edited by Dongwu Langzi on 2012-2-25 at 16:27. The last paragraph is truly wonderful; if they themselves don’t treat their own people as human beings, how can others possibly respect your people? What a tragedy for China. . . . . .

Haven’t you watched the video of Zheng Qiang’s speech? So passionate! I watched it back in my senior year in 2008; it was really thrilling. Each episode lasted over an hour or two. Now he is the deputy secretary of the Party committee at Zhejiang University, but watching too much of it can lead to aesthetic fatigue. . .

I hope there are more professors with such a sense of responsibility in China. The scholars of the past, now referred to as intellectuals, should possess the spirit of \"shouldering morality with firm resolve and writing with boldness.\" I hope there are more Mr. Zhou Shuren of today.

““It’s right to bear responsibilities with a strong will and to write with firm hands,” but in reality, things are often...

China’s problems are quite interesting; it can be said that anyone with even a little knowledge is aware of them, yet no one makes an effort to change things. The *habit formed in this way is terrifying. I feel like it’s like a patient who is already in a critical condition; if strong treatment is applied, they might die, and if no treatment is given, they will still die.