A university is like a beautiful woman. It can be elegant from the inside out, such as how many books it has, how many scientific research results it has, and how deep its teaching resources are. But it is inevitable that it has angular appearance. The eyebrows, eyes, nose and lips that can be seen at a glance are still the first factor that makes people linger.
The so-called eyebrows, eyes, nose and lips refer to how many famous people there are, what outstanding representative products there are, and what influential representative events have taken place. When looking back at the opening ceremonies of various universities and the speeches of the presidents, almost all of them are like turning over a calendar and listing celebrity anecdotes and major events, because these are far more sophisticated than talking about how many books there are in the library or what the employment rate is this year.
So this time is no exception. At the opening ceremony of Central South University of Science and Technology after the military training, the president first talked about the two bombs and one medal, satellites and major key projects. What he said was really exciting. From the first major scientific project to the artificial synthesis of bovine insulin, from the exploration of gravitational waves to the prospects of quantum communications, from those meritorious figures to celebrities from all dynasties, and then mentioned four freshmen this year. One was from a poor mountainous area who relied on hard work and perseverance to be admitted to Central South University of Science and Technology, one played a young leader in a documentary, one insisted on volunteering to help the disabled since high school, and the fourth was Cheng Ran who rejected the temptation from the outside world and had a deep affection for Central South University of Science and Technology.
Then, several hopes were raised. The first was to establish lofty ideals. The second was to cultivate a good style of study. The third was to cultivate collectivism and team spirit, because "modern society is increasingly cooperative, and anyone who has made great achievements and has a great cause should have a collective concept and team spirit."
Then he proposed the concept of "the next 30 years", that is, "the next 30 years are the construction period for China to move from national rejuvenation to rejuvenation, and it is also the golden period for everyone to be young and energetic and start businesses. The next four years of studying at USTC will largely determine the coordinates of everyone's next 30 years. I hope that everyone will focus on learning literary and martial arts, serve the motherland and the people, create the future with the confidence of USTC people, and achieve the great cause of national rejuvenation!"
Next was the speech by Professor Lin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who raised “Three Questions for Learning” and advised the freshmen to “aim high and cherish time as it is gold.”
The president of the student union also gave an impassioned speech: "Caring about the concerns and joys of thousands of families, the country and the mountains and rivers, integrating youth into the melody of the times, and benefiting the world!"
Undoubtedly, being infected by such an environment can indeed bring people honor, hope, and the motivation to achieve something in the future.
After the president of the student union finished speaking, he walked off the stage. The female host Zhang Jing, who had already caught people's attention from the very beginning and was dressed appropriately, stepped forward and announced that the next step was to welcome Cheng Ran, a freshman representative from the School of Computer Science.
When Cheng Ran came on stage and passed by her, they looked at each other. Then Cheng Ran stood on the stage and could see the student union girl in the audience looking at him with a formulaic smile. No other expression could be seen.
It was like a hawk watching a rabbit. It didn't necessarily need to catch it and eat it, but just the intimidation of the gaze was interesting.
Cheng Ran no longer looked at her. He faced the whole audience and began his speech, as if he were a strange thing. Everyone was just watching for its rarity. After you saw and heard it many times and the novelty wore off, you would think it was just that. Cheng Ran simply made a one-time appearance and lifted the veil of mystery, fully displaying his image which could be considered "weird" in the eyes of everyone and "too willful" in the eyes of some people. This way, there would not be the scene of seeing giant pandas at the beginning of the school year again.
However, Cheng Ran, who was supposed to be the rabbit, spoke in front of the podium with such confidence and composure that even Zhang Jing, who had been to various large-scale student occasions, both serious and lively, was surprised.
The content of Cheng Ran's speech was "Standing on the boundary of knowledge, everything in front of us is unknown." We can hear that he integrated his own experience into his speech, saying "it is not others who should tell us where the end is, but we should choose our own starting point and end point," implicitly responding to the reasons why some people in the outside world "rejected Tsinghua University and Peking University and chose Central South University of Science and Technology."
"… Some people feel disappointed that students from prestigious universities are becoming sophisticated egoists. With the halo of a prestigious university, they don't have to worry about jobs or future. The domestic platform is small, but the foreign world is big. So one day, you are in a developed country, your wallet is bulging, your material life is rich, and your living conditions are comfortable. Is that okay? Of course, it's your choice, and others have no right to interfere. But can you use this as a criterion to define whether your life is successful? It may be okay in the secular world, but spiritually and for you personally, is it really difficult to have everything at peace? Do you still maintain a strong spirit of learning, instead of being eaten away by comfort, staying outside the laboratory leading a group with a big belly, waiting for the flowers and halo of social events? Do you still dare to challenge authority, instead of bowing down to the authoritative knowledge system, infinitely praising those established towers, and even if you find a flower blooming irregularly on the plain of authority, you dare not question it at all?"
“… Can you still maintain the sharpness and research ability of ‘it is more important to find problems by yourself than to solve the problems given by the tutor’? Do you “adhere to the idea that there is no one trick to defeat the enemy, only down-to-earth work”? Will you laugh at and despise the vast army of so-called scientific research migrant workers who have a worse future than you and can only do boring scientific research work in the most plain and unpretentious positions? Will you wake up one day and find that your shoulders should not only bear your personal honor and disgrace, success and failure, but also share the fate of your motherland across the ocean after studying abroad, or even the land of your motherland under your feet?”
"Of course we have to pursue personal success, but I hope that we, the people of Central South University of Science and Technology, can think about where our "dream of a strong country" comes from after we achieve personal success one day. It comes from the history of being bullied and abused since the world's industrial revolution. It comes from the poverty and hardship that the Chinese have never gotten rid of in thousands of years of national history. It comes from the exploited status of being a third world citizen after the world's modernization. It comes from the current situation of lagging behind and being controlled by others after the country's rejuvenation and development. Whether the Chinese of the future can be confident, self-reliant and lead the world's forefront, whether they can change from "Made in China" to "Created in China", and whether our descendants can proudly say "I am Chinese!" when mentioning their blood, it is not because of the strength of the country, but the kind of indomitable spirit that we have always inherited no matter in hardship and adversity, and even after the material is highly developed, it will not be eroded!
This is probably what makes a person noble!"
…
After Cheng Ran finished speaking, he walked off the stage amid thunderous applause.
Professors who have experienced many such scenes and school leaders and experts with various titles all felt that this did not sound like a speech that a freshman could give. If freshman speeches with high expectations for school and infinite longings for life are generally still immature, then this speech accurately described the university's scientific research and employment mentality. It did not have the superficial quotations from classics in the past, but was full of practical content, just like a graduate or doctoral student at USTC, or at least the heartfelt words of someone who has been at USTC for many years, which is more appropriate.
Several leaders from HKUST met each other and could see each other nodding slowly.
An old professor who holds the title of academician of the Academy of Sciences and is one of the few great Buddhas in HKUST clapped his hands gently and smiled at the professor next to him, "This class of freshmen has very high aspirations..."
The professor next to him said, "But it's also... you are so arrogant."
"Didn't Academician Lin just say that we should have lofty aspirations? But if you say that this is just the ambition of youth, I don't think so. However, many children nowadays are mentally mature..."
On the other side, Vice Principal Huang Pei did not raise his hands to applaud like the others, but crossed his hands in front of his knees, with a blank expression on his face. He actually hated those backward students who were arrogant and relied on their talents. Some students did not learn much, but they were very talkative and shouted slogans. In Huang Pei's opinion, it would be fine for a freshman to say a few words to thank his mother, father and school for training. After your constructive speech, the effect was indeed not bad, and everyone applauded and cheered. But what about rushing to join the debate team? And there was definitely a sense of disobedience. It didn't look like an honest freshman, but instead he would do something weird.
Of course, there are always some students from Central South University of Science and Technology who come from a serious scientific research background but end up trying to gain promotion through personal connections. Huang Pei has seen a lot of this and has been feeling dissatisfied with some of these phenomena.
The counselors here were well-informed. Shi Jiaxun heard from a fellow counselor from the School of Foreign Languages, "Who is this Cheng Ran in your class? But this is bound to cause a storm. How about a bet? There will definitely be mixed reviews. For example, the rhetorical question in the words is, does Central South University of Science and Technology have it? Compared with foreign aid, the funding for our laboratory is a world of difference. When foreign experts need people, money, and resources, the "real difficulties" that the school always talks about are gone. We will give them whatever we have. Regardless of whether you, a student, have heard this before, someone will definitely be unhappy if you poke it like this."
Shi Jiaxun said, "What's wrong with mixed reviews? It's better than being the same all the time. My students are just that good. Remember, what's interesting about Cheng Ran is not that he's the top scorer. We may not have that many all-rounders in Central South University of Science and Technology, but there are many top scorers in competitions and even in science subjects nationwide, so top scorers are not rare. He is a top 2 person that Chengdu No. 10 Middle School tried its best to win over with all kinds of sugar-coated bullets but failed to capture. Ask yourself, would you have had such courage back then? So let alone his speech that is no less mature than yours and mine, I wouldn't be surprised even if he did something! And you can see the scene, it's an undeniable success!"
After Cheng Ran came down, he put the recorder in his trouser pocket. This was a task assigned by Old Jiang. After confirming the freshman speech, he told Jiang Hongshao about it on CQ. The latter was eager to see Cheng Ran's speech. Since he couldn't get rid of Shi Jiaxun, who was also assigned by Central South University of Science and Technology, Cheng Ran thought he might as well say something, so he wrote a speech immediately and sent it to Jiang Hongshao by email. Not long after, the CQ icon flashed, and the dolphin avatar of "Jiang Chuntian" kept jumping. When he clicked it, Jiang Hongshao replied, "Wow... I want to listen... I really want to listen..."
It almost seemed to jump out of the screen.
"Record it and send it to me, it will be great if you have a video..."
Forget about the video because it is troublesome to transmit. However, I can just hold a recorder and copy the recording file and transmit it to Jiang Hongshao via CQ.
After the ceremony, college life officially begins.
Cheng Ran went down the stairs in front of the dormitory building to eat at the second canteen in the Xingyuan dormitory area. This canteen was where he used to come often, mainly because the canteen chef was very good at cooking. She could fill your plate with 300 grams of rice and you could scoop up a lot of oily pagoda lids when you got 200 grams of Chinese cabbage. When Cheng Ran was not running around for part-time jobs, he often chose to eat here, and he could often fill his stomach with very few meal tickets.
Today, I lined up in front of the window with my plate in hand, looked at the menus, and finally ordered a portion of rice, a portion of spicy rapeseed, and lotus root. I also scooped a ladle of free vegetable soup from the side, the standard configuration, just like the life I faced alone in those years.
He found a seat and sat down. Actually, everyone in the dormitory asked Cheng Ran to have dinner together today, but he decided to come alone, which was also to review Gu Jing.
With a sense of ritual, Cheng Ran reached forward with chopsticks and spoon, scooped up rice and ate vegetables with relish.
Little did they know that from beginning to end, there was a woman who came over to get her meal after jogging in the gym next to the second canteen and saw Cheng Ran order two dishes and a rice bowl and sit down in the corner.
The girl who put on a small jacket after working out hesitated for a moment and went to the window.
Not long after, when Cheng Ran had finished half of the food on his plate, the light in front of him suddenly dimmed and someone sat down. The figure was beautiful enough to attract the attention of about half of the people in the cafeteria.
It was the female student union host who I met at the beginning of the school year and who made all my roommates and many men in the dormitory shout "Oh Yeah, it's so good!" when the freshman ceremony started.
The double-layer lunch box in the girl's hand was placed right in front of Cheng Ran. It contained one or two ounces of rice, a portion of shredded pork with leeks, a portion of vegetarian duck, and a bowl of greasy braised pork next to it.
She sat down with one hand gently holding her hair on the left side, and started eating with a spoon in the other hand. She didn't look reserved at all. After all, she didn't need to be as cautious and reserved as some girls. As a freshman, or some girls might pay attention to their image in front of boys, she didn't need to be shy at all. But after all, she looked good this way.
She scooped up a piece of vegetarian duck and took a small bite, chewing the crispy tofu skin with a sizzling sound. She tilted her head again, her soft black hair falling down along her slender neck to her chest. She looked over with her beautiful round eyes and said, "When you came to the school for an interview, your remarks were reported to the school, and later there was a notice to cancel the management of the sale of fetuses on campus... That's good. In the past, such things were always turned a blind eye. But do you think the school will really make such a big fuss because of an ordinary student interview?"
Cheng Ran looked at the girl in front of him who was eloquent, not very strong, but always gave people some pressure. He didn't even put the spoonful of rice in his hand into his mouth.
"I went to the school office to find out what happened. It was the Sichuan Province No. 1 student who didn't go to Peking University or Tsinghua University. I'm sorry. Xu Ziling... right? You must be very smart, but don't go astray. Reciprocity is the norm. This is for you."
The woman in front of him covered the lunch box and spoon, apparently preparing to take the meal back to the dormitory to eat, but she pushed the bowl of braised pork next to her in front of him.
"It's my reward for the interview."
"No matter what you went through before you entered university, eating green vegetables all day long will not provide you with enough nutrition, which is not good for studying, a mental activity. Unless you don't want to continue to rank among the top students in university, don't you have a scholarship? Do you think eating is still a problem?"
Then, at this table that many people had been looking at subconsciously, the girl who many people had recognized as a famous actress from HKUST picked up her lunch box and stood up. Suddenly, she thought of something and turned around before leaving with a mischievous smile, "Also, my name is Shi Feixuan. I gave a good speech today."
The girl walked away, and then under the grand dome of the second cafeteria, Cheng Ran was staring at the braised pork in a trance.
There is an online literature forum here, and I am attending it these days.