Suddenly Hans appeared to me, he said reassuringly, “You need to have the courage to dream. One who is not afraid of doing so and works out plans to materialize it step by step is like the only person opening his eyes, while everybody around him has not been wakened from a dead sleep. Before one's dream coming true, one needs to be bold enough to dream first, especially to have those seemingly impossible dreams: to become a genius, a giant or a first-rate scientist. It is impossible for someone to realize his full potential if he dares not to do so. Most of people would have had a completely different life if they struggled a little bit further. As to myself, it is just the abandonment of many important things that kept myself from being even better. I don't want you to repeat my mistake.”
突然汉斯出现在我跟前，他安慰我说：“你要有敢于做梦的勇气，不怕做梦并制定计划一步一步实现梦想的人就是那个当所有人都在沉睡中，他却唯独睁开了眼睛的那个人，一个人首先要敢于做梦，尤其是那些看上去不太可能的梦想：成为天才、成为伟人、成为一流科学家，其次他的梦想才能谈得上实现，如果一个人不敢做梦，即便他再有潜力也不可能兑现出来，绝大多人只要再努力那么一点点就会有一个完全不一样的人生，就拿我自己说吧，就是因为当初放弃很多重要的事情我的人生才没能更上一层楼，我不希望你重蹈我的覆辙。”
Since then I became a lonely warrior. I tried to convince myself that I was engaging in a lofty undertaking that would bring change to the world and accepted the old Chinese saying "everyone is filthy whereas I am pure, everybody is drunk whereas I am sober" as my motto whenever people's ridicule caused stir in my heart. Their malevolence, to some extent, had been converted into strength in my heart: the more they jeered at me, the more I took pains to improve myself. I devoured the biographies of giants and tried to persuade myself that success always comes at a cost and only after rain can I see the rainbow when I felt isolated and hopeless and searched every university for lectures when the monographs were too boring and esoteric with me. Within 3 or 4 years, I had already become a man of encyclopedic mind and had that kind of independent thinking Hans took pains to instill in me. Still, it was at my wit's end to excel in all kinds of examinations. Sometimes I even had the bold, crazy idea that the reason why I was unsociable and alienated by my peers is that I was born in a wrong age, and it was not me but modern Chinese education system to take the blame: teachers always make good use of all kinds of odd question types to create difficulties for students and in this way to show their authorities. Everybody in the education system had a deformed faith that the abler one is to deal with exams, the better he is as a student. I really wanted to tell them that "you are wrong", but who would listen to me?
从那时起我就成了一个孤独的战士，每当周围人的嘲笑在我内心泛起波澜的时候，我就试图在内心说服自己我正在从事一项即将改变世界的伟大事业，并将中国的古话“举世混浊予独清、众人皆醉予独醒”当作自己的座右铭，他们的恶意在某种程度上转化为我内心的力量：他们越是嘲笑我，我就越是煞费苦心地提升自己，每当我感到孤独和无助的时候，我就如饥似渴地翻阅着伟人的传记并努力告诫自己成功是总有代价的、不经历风雨哪能见彩虹，每当我感到那些大部头太枯燥、太深奥难懂的时候我就跑遍各大高校听讲座。三四年下来我已经成了一个满腹经纶的人并且掌握了汉斯费尽苦心培养我的那种独立思考的能力，可尽管如此，我还是穷于应付大大小小各种门类的考试，有时候我甚至疯狂大胆地认为我之所以不合群、被我的同龄人孤立是因为我出生在一个错误的时代，不是我反倒是当代中国的教育体系应该为此承担责任：老师们总是利用各种稀奇古怪的题型来刁难学生并借此显示出他们的权威，教育系统内的每个人都畸形地认为一个人应试的能力越强，他就是越优秀的学生，我真想告诉他们“你们错了”，但是谁会听我的话呢？
The most horrible scene for me is the announcement of the results. The teacher came into the classroom with a pile of test papers in hands. After everything was ready, he cleared his throat to declare the beginning of the process. "Bill, the first, 98 points, very good; Tony, the second, 93 points, I'm glad for your efforts, since you are not so excellent last time; Neil, the third, 90 points, not bad, you need to try even harder next time." It is always my turn when everyone's name had been pronounced, "Peter, the last one, 30 points, I've never seen a boy as incorrigible as you are. You worthless, when can you take off your 'bottom one' hat?" His words caused a roar of laughter by the whole class, and took my already self-abased mentality a turn for the worse. My grandfather dissuaded Hans now and then from the crazy idea of moulding me into a genius. "Be realistic and stopping having your head in the clouds. Chinese soil is not fit for genius, while middle course is the golden rule in China. Have you seen a genius ending well in recent history? Ning Bo broke from the secular world and became a monk; Wei Yong Kang fell from the altar and became a laughing-stock. Lin Jia Wen jumped to his death. Geniuses may be extraordinary in most people's eyes, the vast majority of them are nonetheless too unsociable to lead happy lives. To bring Peter down to an ordinary man, to send him to an average university, find an ordinary job and get married with an average partner is the only right way forward!" Notwithstanding his well-meant words, Hans always argued with him until both of them are blue in the face. "You are gambling! It may be satisfactory if you win, but what if you lose? Even if you are a good sport, can you trifle with Peter's future?" Grandpa snarled when he was driven mad.
对我来说最恐怖的时刻莫过于公布成绩的时候，老师捧着一大摞卷子走进教室，当一切准备就绪，他清了清嗓子预示着这一过程的开端。“比尔，第一名，98分，非常棒；托尼，第二名，93分，你上次考得可没这么好，为你的努力感到高兴；尼尔，第三名，90分，也不赖，再接再厉。”我总是当所有同学的名字都被念完、最后轮到的那个：“彼得，最后一名，30分，我从未见过像你这般不可救药的孩子，你这个没用的家伙，你啥时候能摘掉‘成绩垫底’的帽子啊？”他的话引起了全班的一阵哄笑，让我原本就自卑的心理再次自卑到了一个新的高度。爷爷时不时地劝阻爸爸放弃将我塑造成一个天才的疯狂想法，“别做梦了，现实点吧，中国的土壤就不可能诞生天才，中庸之道才是中国人奉行金科玉律，你见过近代史上有善终的天才吗？宁铂看破红尘、剃度为僧；魏永康跌落神坛，成了所有人的笑柄；林嘉文跳楼身亡，天才或许在绝大多数人眼里非同寻常，但是他们中的绝大多数人因为太不合群以至于不能拥有幸福的人生，过个正常人的生活、考个普通的大学、找一份普通的工作、再娶一个普通的老婆才是王道！”尽管他出于善意才说这些话，但是爸爸总是跟他争得面红耳赤，爷爷恼羞成怒后，只能气急败坏地说：“你这是在赌博！如果赢了当然皆大欢喜，可如果你输了呢？即便你愿赌服输，可你能拿彼得的前途开玩笑吗？”
Mary was the only one counted as my friend. Although she was as perfunctory as an idler in my eyes, she kept in the top three and was the darling for her head teacher. Perhaps for the reason that she held the belief that one is a good girl only if she did well in the exam, she made deliberate attempts towards it, and having inherited the smart genes from her mother, she could get twice the result with half the effort. She was a girl with mature looks, her face was as exquisite as the movie star Yang Mi and her figure slim Angelababy when she was grown a little older. These reasons combined made her the one of every boy's dreams and the envy of each of her kind. Even if she had already attained the position of an "empress", she was not to my taste. Probably because the values Hans fostered are deeply rooted in my heart and her "fatal weakness" against them revolted me: without any creativity and imagination, the only thing she can do was to read without thinking and conform to what teacher said. So what? A student is sure to have a promising career as long as he keeps his sharpness in exams. In spite of the fact that Mary had already been spoiled like a princess by people around her, she was amiable and friendly to an outcast like me. As there had a small park in the neighborhood and both of us were keen on the slide and parallel bars in it, we run into each other at least once a week. Although I had already been labelled a future scavenger and a bricklayer, she never hit me with harsh words. On the contrary, she used to inspire me like this:
玛丽可以算作我唯一的朋友，尽管在我眼里她只是一个敷衍了事、百无聊赖的人，她却能保持在前三名并成为班主任眼里的宠儿，或许是因为她抱着只有在学习上出彩才能算得上是个好孩子的信念，她有意识地朝这方面努力，同时因为她继承了她妈妈聪明的基因，所以她只需要付出一丁点努力就能取得高于普通人的成就。当她长大一点后，她的外表看上去很成熟，她的脸蛋就像电影明星杨幂的一样精致，身材宛如杨颖，所有这些原因加起来让她成了每一个男孩的梦中情人和每一个女生为之羡慕嫉妒恨的对象。即便她已经登上了“女王”的宝座，她却不是我的菜，或许是汉斯培养的价值观已经在我内心根深蒂固的缘故，我对她那种违背价值标准的“致命的弱点”尤为反感：缺乏独创性和想象力的她只会死记硬背并亦步亦趋地跟在老师屁股后面，可那又怎样？只要一个人能在考试中保持锋芒他就必定会前途无量。尽管玛丽已经被周围人宠得像个公主一样，她却对我这个社会弃儿十分友好与和善，因为我们小区内有一个小公园，我们两个都热衷于其中的滑梯和双杠，所以我们至少一周能碰一次面，尽管我已被贴上未来拾荒者和砌砖工的标签，她却从未用尖刻的言语刺激我，相反，她总是这样开导我：
“You are not stupid, why don't you make some effort to prepare for exams?”
“What is the point of doing so? Is Einstein known for high grades? Did Edison spend one second on it? Is it because Faraday is a hero on the test paper that he laid the foundation of electromagnetics?” Being disgusted with her platitudes, I asked in reply with a silver tongue.
“Einstein, Edison or Faraday, none of them exist in a vacuum. They are, first and foremost, men in realty. They need to bring home the bacon. They are eager to be recognized by the mainstream world. The achievement and success aside, what I know is that you will be knocked out from the current community if you don't learn to deal with exams and follow the crowd.” Mary did her best to convince me, as if I was her child.
“Ok, Ok, you prepare for your exams and I'm willing to be eliminated.” I said in a fit of pique.
“You are too young to know what you are doing. It will be too late to understand everything when you are grown up, but it is not too late now to change yourself and adapt to the environment.” She put on the airs of an adult and talked down to me.
“Don't preach at me like my father and mother! Don't forget you are only 1 year older than I am. Who are you to teach me like this?” I sulked.
“All I said is for your own good. Don't take it to heart if you are wounded by any of my words.” Feeling I was immovable against her words, Mary made a face, concluded the talk in haste and ran all the way back to her home.
“你又不笨，为什么不在考试上下点功夫呢？”
“这么做有意义吗？爱因斯坦是因为分数高而名声在外的吗？爱迪生花过一秒钟在考试上吗？法拉第奠定了电磁学的基础乃是因为他是一个试卷上的英雄吗？”对她的陈词滥调讨厌至极的我口齿伶俐地反问道。
“爱因斯坦也好、爱迪生也好、法拉第也好，他们都不是生活在真空中的人，他们首先是现实生活中的大活人，他们也需要挣钱养家，他们也渴望得到主流世界的认可，撇开成就不谈，我只知道如果你学不会随大流和应付考试，你就不得不面对从这个圈子中淘汰出局的命运。”玛丽苦口婆心地劝说我，把我当成了她的孩子。
“好吧，好吧，你去准备你的考试，我心甘情愿地淘汰出局。”我赌气地说。
“你太小了还不知道你在干什么，等你长大了就算明白一切也为时已晚，可是如果你从现在开始改变自己、适应环境还不算太晚。”她摆出一副大人的架子居高临下地对我说。
“别像我爸妈一样教训我！别忘了你仅仅比我大一岁而已，你凭什么这么教训我？”我愠怒地说。
“我说的这一切都是在为你好，如果我的言语刺伤了你，你可别往心里去。”感觉我油盐不进的玛丽做了一个鬼脸，草草结束了谈话，并径直朝家走去。
Seeing that I was a dead wood and was unable to climb up to an advantageous position even if someone gave me a hand, when the high school entrance examination came, it took me a great deal of efforts to bring my points up to the cut-off point of a low-ranking one. As a Chinese saying goings: Birds of a feather flock together. I felt much relaxed than before, as most of my fellow students were by no means any better than me. On the other hand, with years of accumulation I had already had the ability to probe into the front problems of mathematics and physics. It is my boast that when everyone was cramming for the simplest exams, I was eligible for the toughest subjects impossible even to experts and professors. The new environment, compared to the previous one within which everybody turned against me, was not a bit better. As if it verified that old Chinese saying: in every country dogs bite. One day I was probing into my quantum mechanics in Chinese class as usual. It is a convention that teachers struck a pose on the platform, and students did whatever they wanted in their seats, but today an exception occurred. I was too absorbed in my study to realize the teacher Jack had already noticed and sneaked behind me. Having spent 2 or 3 minutes examining what I was doing, he gave a little cough to attract my attention, put on airs and said:
鉴于我是一块不可雕的朽木、即便有人拉我一把我都不可能爬上一个稍稍有利的位置，中考来临之际，我费了好大的劲才够上一所蹩脚高中的分数线，正如古话说得好：物以类聚、人以群分，因为同学中绝大多数都是跟我半斤八两的那种，所以我感到学习压力比之前要小多了。在另一方面，由于多年的积累我已经具备了研究数学和物理中最前沿问题的能力，我甚至可以拍着胸脯大言不惭地说，当时有人在应付低级的不能再低级的考试的时候，我已经有资格深究那些即便是专家和教授都无能为力的艰深问题，相较于人人都站在立面上跟我作对的旧环境，新环境也好不到哪里去，这或许应验了中国的那句古话：天下乌鸦一般黑。一天我像往常一样在语文课上研究我的量子力学，照惯例老师在讲台上做做样子，我们学生坐在座位上想干什么就干什么，但今天却出了一个例外，我太专注于自己的研究，以至于没有察觉到老师杰克已经注意到我并溜到了我身后一探究竟，两三分钟后他轻轻咳了一声引起我的注意，并装腔作势地说：
“It is an amazement that there exists a physicist in this little place! Is our teachers' work not good enough? We ignored such a child prodigy, a future great man!”
“Sorry, Jack, I... I... I have taken out a wrong book by mistake.” Jack's sudden appearance startled me and I made up an excuse in a flurry. “There are a lot of things in my schoolbag, and it is not easy to find the right one.”
“Stand up and talk to me!” Jack raised his voice and became fierce to me, “I have been watching you for a long time. What I saw is that you entirely ignored me and focused on some bullshit irrelevant to the college entrance examination!” As if Jack had never been taken seriously before, he made an example of me in front of the whole class.
“What's the point of examination?” Perhaps his words touch me to the quick, I nerved myself to challenge him in full view of the public, “Why there never existed an Einsteinian, Nietzschean and Freudian figure in China through the ages? Why scarcely any of them was excellent enough to be awarded the Noble Prize? It is the problem of the education system. It is because teachers trained students to get high grades without developing their abilities, because everybody racks his brains to be a hero on the test paper!”
“Are you teaching me? Do I need your teaching?” Jack glanced at me and clucked in disdain, as if a bottom student was far less qualified for such a big problem, “Now I will tell you how to be a good boy. Bring your schoolbag and stand in the doorway. You will be allowed to return to your seat whenever you can recite the text.”
“没想到我们这个小地方居然出了一个物理学家，是我们老师的工作做得不够好吗？我们竟然埋没了这么一位大天才、一个将来的伟人！”
“对不起，杰克，我...我...我拿错书了。”杰克的突然出现吓了我一跳，慌忙中我编造了一个借口，“我书包里的东西太多了，想要找点东西真不容易。”
“站起来跟我说话！”杰克提高了嗓门，态度也变得恶劣起来，“我已经注意了你很长时间，我看到的是你完全无视我的存在，专注于一些跟高考一毛钱关系都没有的狗屁玩意儿！”似乎之前从未有人拿杰克当回事，因此他当着全班同学的面拿我开刀、杀鸡给猴看。
“考试有什么用？”或许是他的话触到了我的痛点，我鼓起勇气当着所有人的面挑战他，“为什么中国古往今来都没出过一个爱因斯坦、尼采、弗洛伊德式的人物？为什么中国人鲜有能拿诺贝尔奖的？这是教育体制的问题，是因为学生被老师训练得高分低能，是因为所有人绞尽脑汁成为试卷上的英雄！”
“你是在教我吗？我用得着你教吗？”杰克瞥了我一眼，不屑地咂了咂嘴，似乎一个成绩垫底的学生根本不配谈论这些大问题，“现在就让我告诉你如何做一个好孩子，拿起你的书包站到门口去，你什么时候能把课文背下来，我什么时候放你回你的座位。”
It is not until the class was over and Jack left the classroom as if nothing had happened that I venture to drag myself back to my seat. One clever, enthusiastic lad came and tried to talk some sense into me,
“Why do you seek trouble for yourself? I know the lesson is boring and the content is too difficult to penetrate. You are not the only one, most of us lack interest in it. What the teacher needed is not the intelligence to follow what he said, but a kind of 'pretending to know'. What is the least favorite thing for them is that you put on a wrong attitude and stand up to them! So, you should learn to be a coward, act as a yes-man, and nod to whatever they said.”
“So what are we here for?” I was still immovable as before, “It is better to devote ourselves to something more important than to misspend youth here to 'pretend to know' and act as lackeys.”
“How silly you are! You spend 3 years here and you will get the diploma.” He justified, “With it you can sit in the office and get paid easily and without it the only way prepared for you is to be a nightman or a mason. Do you want to be down and out?”
直到下课，杰克像个没事人似的离开了教室，我才敢拖着疲惫的身躯回到座位上，一位机灵热心的小伙子走过来试图开导我说：
“你这么做何苦呢？我知道课讲得很枯燥，内容太深奥难懂，不仅仅是你，我们中的绝大多数都对此缺少兴趣，老师要的不是你有多聪明，而是需要一种‘不懂装懂’，他们最不喜欢的就是态度不端正、跟他们顶着干的那种人！所以你要学会装怂、做一个应声虫，不管他们说什么你只要答‘是’就可以了。”
“那我们干嘛来这里呢？”我还是如以前那般冥顽不化，“与其在这里浪费青春地‘不懂装懂’和做老师的哈巴狗，倒不如去干一些更重要的事了。”
“你傻啊！你在这里混三年就能拿到文凭了。”他引用论据来佐证他的论点，“拿到文凭你就能坐办公室轻松赚钱了，但是如果没有文凭你只能去做挑粪工和泥瓦匠，难道你想沦落社会底层吗？”
Sometimes I made attempts to keep the crowd at a distance, yet a kind of “centripetal force” drew me to them and I constantly had a feeling that I was to be consumed by the massive black hole if I was not cautious enough to be on guard against it. Fortunately, Hans prepared a pair of wings for me to leave the mediocre ground and soar high into the sky. With more than 10 years of assiduous research into math and physics, I successfully proved the Riemann Hypothesis—a difficult problem over centuries and with the achievement I had a skyrocketing rise onto the summit of learning. My contribution to foreign top journals made a stir in the academic community. No one expected a middle school student couldn't be any ordinary was on a par with top scientists in the world, let alone in a nation of rigid education like China. Immediately I became the object sought after by the media and scrambled for by top universities. When reporters interviewed students and teachers for my growth experience and history of struggle, everybody chorused the praise and compliment of me such as "Peter revealed his talent from an early age", "I have long said he will make a difference", "we are too mediocre to keep up with him". When it comes to Simon, he expressed hypocritically "how much he appreciated me from the first day I came to his class" and never mention even one syllable of his quarrel with my father and the bleak future he expected me to get.
有时尽管我刻意跟人群保持距离，但是总有一种“向心力”把我吸引过去，我经常有一种只要自己一不稍加提防就会被巨大的黑洞吞噬掉的感觉，幸亏汉斯给了我一双脱离平庸地面展翅高飞的翅膀。经过十多年对数学和物理兢兢业业的钻研，我成功证明了黎曼猜想——一个世纪难题，凭借这个成就我一步登天地登上了学术的巅峰，我在国外顶级期刊上的攥稿引起了学术界的轰动，没人料想到一位普通得不能再普通的中学生居然达到了世界顶级科学家的水平，更何况是在中国这个教育僵化死板的国家，我立马就成了媒体争相追捧和重点高校奋力抢夺的对象，当记者采访我的老师和同学以获得我成长经历和奋斗史的时候，每个人异口同声地夸赞和恭维我，比如说“彼得很小就显露出惊人的天赋了”、“我早就说过他将改变世界”、“我们太平庸了根本跟不上他的思维”，当记者问道西蒙的时候，他假惺惺地声称“自从我入学的第一天起，他就如何欣赏我”并只字不提他跟我爸爸吵架的内容和他预料我将会前途一片黯淡的事情。
Finally, I spent 3 months preparing for IELTS and was successfully admitted by MIT with full scholarship. My decision to go on with my study abroad was partly out of a psychology to get rid of the current spoon-fed learning environment of China, by which I was deeply wounded, partly because I felt it would be a good opportunity for me to expand my horizon and improve my body of knowledge in an advanced western country. My father and mother took out all their savings to back me, and I was well aware of an important mission put on my shoulder as I perceived their grey hair and staggering steps at the time when they saw me off and bade goodbye in a reluctant tone. It is as if a kind of fetters had been thrown off when I left the environment imprisoned me for more than 18 years, and I could do whatever I like and pursue any aims when I regained liberty. Having integrated into the relaxed and free academic atmosphere of MIT, I really had the feeling of "a duck in water". The professors were tolerant and the fellow students were very kind to me. The former tried their best to answer and the latter discussed earnestly every detail with me whenever I interrogated them with all kinds of curious questions. Instead of taking examination as the only yardstick to measure me, what they gave priority to is how original and imaginative my new ideas were. My times there spanned 10 years, during which my gift and talent had been recognized and I gradually held my ground in the international academia. At the age of 40, I was awarded the Fields Medal for my achievements in mathematics and invited to give a lecture about the tricks of my success in the Awards Night.
最终我花了三个月准备雅思并成功以全额奖学金进入麻省理工学院，我选择去国外深造一半是出于逃避当下中国填鸭式教育环境的心理，因为在其中我深受其害，另一半是我感觉在一个先进的西方国家读书不仅可以开阔我的眼界，也可以进一步完善自己的知识体系，我的父母拿出了他们所有的积蓄来支持我，当他们送别我、依依不舍地跟我说再见时，我注意到他们的满头白发和蹒跚的步伐并因而感觉到自己肩上担负着沉重的使命，当我离开了禁锢我将近18年之久的环境时我感觉自己似乎甩掉了一副脚镣，重获自由的我想做什么就做什么、只要有目标就可以尽力去追。当我融入了麻省理工宽松自由的环境以后，我找到了一种如鱼得水的感觉，教授们对我很宽容、同学们也对我很友好，每当我用各式各样稀奇古怪的问题去拷问他们的时候，老师们总是尽力解答，同学们认真跟我探讨其中的每一个细节，他们从不用考试作为衡量我的唯一准绳，相反，他们看重的是我新观点的独创性和想象力，我在那里呆了10多年，期间我的天赋和才能得到了认可，我也逐渐在国际学术界站稳了脚跟，在我四十岁那年，因为数学上的成就我被授予菲尔兹奖，并被邀请在颁奖晚会上谈谈自己成功的秘诀。
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honor to be here and awarded such an important prize. The endeavor and efforts apart, my success today can't be divorced from the people I met in my life. I have to appreciate everyone around me: the professors in MIT for they introduced me into the magic mathematic world; my fellow students for their trains of thought inspired me into many novel, interesting ideas. I have even to be grateful to those ones in my childhood who looked down upon me, rode on me and 'beat the pants out of me', because it is just their evil intents and hostilities that urged my on to study hard. But in particular, I must thank my father and mother for the reason that they granted me the space for dream in an age no one dared to do so. Before one's dream coming true, one needs to be bold enough to dream first, especially to have those seemingly impossible ones. It is impossible for someone to realize his full potential if he dares not to dream. So, I will not be here today if my parents are not farsighted enough to teach me to dream. Thank you, Hans and Linda!”
“晚上好，女士们先生们，我能站在这里领如此重要的一个奖项感到万分荣幸，撇开我的努力不谈，我能有今天的成功离不开我生命中遇到的所有人，我不得不感谢他们中的每一位：感谢麻省理工的教授，因为他们将我领进了数学的神奇世界；感谢我的同学，因为他们的思路启发了我许多新颖有趣的观点，我甚至得感谢那些早年瞧不起我、骑在我身上揍得我满地找牙的那些人，因为正是他们的恶意鞭策我发奋学习，但是我特别要感谢的是我的父母，因为在一个人人都不敢做梦的时代里，他们给了我做梦的空间，一个人首先要敢于做梦，尤其是那些看上去不太可能的梦想，其次他的梦想才能谈得上实现，如果一个人都不敢做梦，即便他再有潜力也不可能兑现出来，所以如果不是他们有足够的远见教我做梦，我不会站在这里，谢谢你，汉斯和琳达！”
Followed my speech was a thunderous applause from the audience. And thus my story came to a perfect halt.
当我演讲完毕，台下掌声雷动，我的故事也由此画上了一个完满的句号。
(This story is fictional. Any resemblance to actual individuals or events is coincidental.)
（本故事纯属虚构，如有雷同纯属巧合）
Postscript: I was engaged as a tenured professor at Princeton. However, as the price abroad was too high and my homesickness grew stronger and stronger with days, I finally returned to my motherland when I was as old as the hills. After a long separation of 60 years, I met Mary again. She had already been an aged woman with wrinkled face and humpback. In a prolonged conversation with her, I learnt her career was not so smooth as I imagined. Although she had a gift to excel in exams, she soon exposed her weakness and became at a loss when she left that kind of environment and entered the job market. She had very few opportunities to show her strength at work, and, you see, scarcely any leaders favor a subordinate with no special skills, even if he or she used to be a hero on the test paper. Mary had three relationships, but none of them lasted long. As she always tried to maintain her feeling of superiority and expected to be humored by the other side, she couldn't find a man to put up with her. Consequently, she was obliged to face a solitary old age. A previous top student in the education system became a good-for-nothing in real life now, who can tell it is right or wrong?
后记：我被普林斯顿聘为终身教授，然而因为国外的物价太贵、我的思乡情结与日俱增，当我老态龙钟之际我最终回到了我的祖国，在长达60年的分离之后，我再次见到了玛丽，此时的她已经是一位满脸皱纹和驼背的耄耋老人，经过了一次促膝长谈，我了解到她的日子过得并不如我想象般的那么顺，尽管她擅长考试，脱离了那个环境进入职场后的她很快就暴露出了自己的弱点、并在工作中感到无所适从，在工作中她极少有展示自己优势的机会，要知道，几乎没有哪个领导会喜欢那种一无所长的下属，即便他曾经是一个试卷上的英雄。玛丽经历过三段感情，但是没有一段持续了很久，鉴于她总是试图在对方面前维持自己的优越感、总是希望对方宠着她，没有人能受得了她，结果她不得不面对一个孤独凄凉的晚年，一个曾经教育体系中的优等生变成了现实生活中的废柴，孰是孰非谁能说得清呢？
【完】
