Change the world? change ourselves
Good evening, honorable judges, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s my great pleasure to stand here to present my speech—change the world, change ourselves.
It’s noticable that western holidays are becoming increasingly popular day by day, while chinese traditional festivals are being somewhat neglected. not long before about 10 doctors in beijing university and qinghua unversity announced that we should reject the invasion of western holidays ,because they regard western holidays as an challenge against our traditional festivals and culture.
Frankly speaking, i don’t quite agree with them.Indeed, we should never neglect or even discard our traditonal festivals as china boasts a brilliant history and splendid traditions. (examples).but why can’t we absorb the meaningful western holidays and culture.
There are obvious reasons why some western holidays are so popular in china. on the one hand, some of the western holidays which we chinese don’t have are reasonable and meaningful, such as father’s day and april fool’s day etc. on the other hand,the prevalence of globalization enables western culture to prevail in china. overwhelmed by such a trend,chinese unconsciously get involved in western holidays and culture.
With the further development of the whole world, the cultural communication between different countries and nations becom faster and more and more important. we are indeed from different nations, but we are the citizens of the same world, so the outstanding culture of different nations is the commom wealth of everyone on the earth.the only way for us to protect our traditional culture is to reject the foreign culture? the answer is definitely no. what we ought to do is to spare no effort to educate chinese to get to know and treasure our splendid traditions instead of rejecting foreign culture. only by educating can we set our confidence and belief towards our culture. only by educating can we preserve and promote the wealth that our ancesters left for us.
At last i’d like to share a famouse saying of gandhi with all of you ,that is:if you want to change the world, then you must change yourself first.”
【参考译文】
改变世界?改变自己
晚上好，尊敬的评委，女士们，先生们。
我很高兴站在这里发表我的演讲改变世界，改变我们自己。
引人注目的是，西方的节日日益变得越来越流行，而中国的传统节日被冷落。不久前在北京大学和清华大学约10名医生宣布，我们应该拒绝入侵的西方节日，因为他们认为西方节日作为一种挑战我们的传统节日和文化。
坦白地说，我不完全同意他们。事实上，我们不应该忽视甚至抛弃我们的传统节日作为中国拥有辉煌的历史和灿烂的传统。但是为什么我们不能吸收有意义的西方节日和文化呢?。
有明显的原因，一些西方节日在中国如此受欢迎。另一方面，一些西方的节日，我们中国人不合理和有意义的事情，比如父亲节，四月的愚人节等，另一方面，普遍的全球化使得西方文化在中国盛行。在这种潮流的冲击下，中国人不知不觉地卷入了西方的节日和文化。
随着世界的发展，文化交流不同国家和民族之间变得更加快捷和更重要。我们来自不同的国家，但我们是公民相同的世界，所以不同的民族优秀文化是我们保护我们的传统文化在地球每个人的共有财产的唯一途径就是拒绝外国的文化吗?答案当然是否定的。我们应该做的是不遗余力地教育中国人去认识和珍惜我们灿烂的传统，而不是拒绝外国文化。只有通过教育，我们才能树立我们对文化的信心和信念。只有通过教育才能保持和提升的财富，我们的祖先留给我们。
最后我想说的一个著名的分享甘地和你们，那就是：如果你想改变世界，那么你必须改变你自己。”
