In the past twenty years, China has faced three American presidents, but till coming to Yale today, I never realized that China really just faced one university. Although, through these three presidents, I understand that the quality of Yale graduates is not so even.
　　过去的二十年，中国一直在跟美国的三任总统打交道，但是今天到了耶鲁我才知道，其实他只跟一所学校打交道。但是透过这三位总统我也明白了，耶鲁大学的毕业生的水准也并不很平均。

　　Let me begin my main subject and let me give it a title, called “My Story and the Chinese Dream Behind It”. I want to talk about five particular years. The first is 1968. That year I was born. But it was also a chaotic year for the world. In France, there was this huge street disturbance, and in America, too. Then President Kennedy was assassinated. However, I really did not cause all of these! But that year what we remember more was the assassination of Mr. Martin Luther King. Although he fell that year, his words “I have a dream” stood up, not only stood up in America, but across the whole world.
　　接下来就进入我们这个主题，或许要起个题目的话应该叫《我的故事以及背后的中国梦》。我要讲五个年份，第一要讲的年份是1968年。那一年我出生了。但是那一年世界非常乱，在法国有它的这个，巨大的街头的骚乱，在美国也有，然后美国的总统肯尼迪遇刺了，但是的确这一切的原因都与我无关。但是那一年我们更应该记住的是马丁路德金先生遇刺，虽然那一年他倒下了，但是“我有一个梦想”的这句话却真正地站了起来，不仅在美国站起来，在全世界站起来。

　　But sadly, not only for me, but for almost all Chinese, we did not know such a dream. It was hard to describe each Chinese as having his or her own dream. China and America were so far apart, no less far apart than the Moon and the Earth. But I didn’t care about any of that. All I cared about was could I have a full meal. Clearly, I was born at a very inconvenient time, not only for China, but even for the world, there were problems.
　　但是当时很遗憾，不仅仅是我，几乎很多的中国人并不知道这个梦想，因为当时中国人，每一个个人很难说拥有自己的梦想。中国与美国的距离非常遥远，不亚于月亮与地球之间的距离。但是我并不关心这一切，我只关系我是否可以吃饱。很显然，我的出生非常不是时候，不仅对于当时的中国来说，对于世界来说，似乎都有些问题。

　　In 1978, ten years later, I was 10. I still lived in the very little city that had only 200 thousand people at the time I was born. It was 2000 km from Beijing. If you wanted to read the newspaper from Beijing, you waited three days. So for us, there was no such thing as news. That year my grandfather passed away. Two years before that my father passed away. So there was just my mother left to take care of me and my brother. Her monthly salary was not even ten dollars. As a result, even though I was 10, the word “dream” was still not in my vocabulary, and I would never think of it. I could not see hope in this family, but only felt bitter cold every winter. Where we lived was close to the Soviet Union. Yet the 1978 in which I could not see hope was also the year that a huge change took place, whether for China or for the relationship between China and America. That is a date that everybody here today should remember.
　　1978年，十年之后。我十岁，我依然生活在我出生的时候，那个只有二十万人的非常非常小的城市里。它离北京的距离有两千公里，它要想了解北京出的报纸的话，要在三天之后才能看见，所以对于我们来说，是不存在新闻这个说法。那一年我的爷爷去世了，而在两年前的时候我的父亲去世了，所以只剩下我母亲一个人要抚养我们哥俩，她一个月的工资不到十美元。因此即使十岁了，梦想这个词对我来说，依然是一个非常陌生的词汇，我从来不会去想它。我看不到这个家庭的希望，只是会感觉，那个时候的每一个冬天都很寒冷，因为我所生活的那个城市离苏联更近。但是就在我看不到希望的1978年的时候，不管是中国这个国家，还有中国与美国这两个国家之间，发生了非常巨大的变化，那是一个我们在座的所有人，今天都该记住的年份。