想起女儿当年学中文

各位嘉宾、老师、校长和同学们，很高兴我能代表毕业班的学生发言。首先我想问几个问题：

Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow students, I’m pleased to stand before you today in representation of the graduating class. First, I would like to pose a couple questions:

我们为什么要来中文学校？       Why do we come to Chinese school?

Well, to learn Chinese. 我们来这儿当然是为了学中文。

那，我们为什么要学中文呢？So, why do we learn Chinese?

说实话，那是我父母的选择。 Well, personally, my parents make me.

我六岁时来到了美国，那时我一句英语也不会说，而我中文也只会写我的名字。我很快就学会了英文，然后八岁时，我开始上中文学校。但我并不喜欢学中文，可是我父母坚持逼我学中文，说是为我自己好。我想我值得花这样多的时间去学汉语吗？

        I came to the United States when I was six years old. I did not know a single word of English and the only thing I could write in Chinese was my own name. My English improved and when I was about eight years old, I started Chinese school. I started because my parents made me and I absolutely hated it, but my mom always forced me to learn, telling me it was for my own good. And I remember always thinking: “Yeah, right.”

       但是在学习汉语的过程中，唐诗、宋词、元曲，历史、文化、名人佚事使我渐渐开始对中文有了点兴趣。

Over the years, I haven’t completely gotten past the loathing, but the degree of distaste for it has decreased as I learned more about Chinese literature, history, and culture.

记得初中时有一回上美术课，我用毛笔画了一棵竹子，盖上了中文的印章，结果老师觉得满有意思，于是把全年级的美术课改为学习中国画，我还成了国画老师。同时我也发现美国学生对中国的文化也很感兴趣，这更增强了我要学好汉语的信心。

当我回到中国的时候，越发感到我面对十三亿和我一样黑眼睛、黑头发的中国人，我不能成为文盲。

When I was in middle school, I did a Chinese painting of a bamboo plant for art class and I even put on my Chinese seal. My art teacher was so fascinated by it that she changed my entire grade’s curriculum to studying Chinese painting; I even became a Chinese painting instructor. However, it really wasn’t until I took a trip back to China a couple years ago that I discovered its value. When face-to-face with 1.3 billion Chinese people who have the same unique features as myself, I could not and would not be dumb and illiterate before them.

今天，我毕业了，我拿到的仅仅是一张毕业证书吗？不是，我相信这是一把钥匙。有了它，我们能了解五千年中国的文明史；有了它，我们能弘扬中华文化；有了它，我们能与占世界人口五分之一的中国人交流与沟通。

I realized that Chinese is not just something that restricts my time, something I have to go to every Sunday, a day that we shouldn’t have to go to school on, it is also a key, a key which allows us exclusively to access the wisdom of a civilization with five thousand years of history; It is a key which allows us to disseminate our magnificent heritage and culture; it is a key which allows us to communicate with 1/5 of the world’s population.

您读过《根》这本小说吗？如果一棵树的根跨越太平洋，伸向亚美两块大陆，你能想象这将是一棵什么样子的树吗？我们正是这一种树。我们在接受西方的教育，而中文学校使我们也能受到东方文化的熏陶，我相信这种同时吸收东西方养分的树一定会枝繁叶茂。

Can you imagine a forest of trees whose roots extend from the East to the West, across a continent and an ocean? Can you imagine how magnificent these trees would be? Well, we are those trees; we have roots in the East and in the West. Our roots have already been deeply imbedded into western soil, and western values and ideas have already been deeply imbedded into our minds and hearts. But Chinese and Chinese school allows our other roots to be implanted into eastern soil and eastern culture as well.

最后，让我们感谢老师，我们辛勤的园丁；感谢家长和学校，为我们提供学习汉语的条件。

In conclusion, we have to thank our dedicated teachers and parents for their constant support, without which we wouldn’t be here right now, and we have to thank this Chinese school because without it, we wouldn’t have a place to learn.

Thank you. 谢谢大家。