1、Yang Lan: The generation thats remaking ChinaThe night before I was heading for Scotland, I was invited to host the final of Chinas Got Talent show in Shanghai with the 80,000 live audience in the stadium. Guess who was the performing guest?Susan Boyle. And I told her, Im going to Scotland the next
2、day. She sang beautifully, and she even managed to say a few words in Chinese. ChineseSo its not like hello or thank you, that ordinary stuff. It means green onion for free. Why did she say that? Because it was a line from our Chinese parallel Susan Boyle - a 50-some year-old woman, a vegetable vend
3、or in Shanghai, who loves singing Western opera, but she didnt understand any English or French or Italian, so she managed to fill in the lyrics with vegetable names in Chinese. (Laughter) And the last sentence of Nessun Dorma that she was singing in the stadium was green onion for free. So as Susan
4、 Boyle was saying that, 80,000 live audience sang together. That was hilarious.So I guess both Susan Boyle and this vegetable vendor in Shanghai belonged to otherness. They were the least expected to be successful in the business called entertainment, yet their courage and talent brought them throug
5、h. And a show and a platform gave them the stage to realize their dreams. Well, being different is not that difficult. We are all different from different perspectives. But I think being different is good, because you present a different point of view. You may have the chance to make a difference.My
6、 generation has been very fortunate to witness and participate in the historic transformation of China that has made so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. I remember that in the year of 1990,when I was graduating from college, I was applying for a job in the sales department of the first five-st
7、ar hotel in Beijing, Great Wall Sheraton - its still there. So after being interrogated by this Japanese manager for a half an hour, he finally said, So, Miss Yang, do you have any questions to ask me?I summoned my courage and poise and said,Yes, but could you let me know, what actually do you sell?
8、 I didnt have a clue what a sales department was about in a five-star hotel. That was the first day I set my foot in a five-star hotel.Around the same time, I was going through an audition - the first ever open audition by national television in China - with another thousand college girls. The produ
9、cer told us they were looking for some sweet, innocent and beautiful fresh face. So when it was my turn, I stood up and said, Why do womens personalities on television always have to be beautiful, sweet, innocent and, you know, supportive? Why cant they have their own ideas and their own voice? I th
10、ought I kind of offended them. But actually, they were impressed by my words. And so I was in the second round of competition, and then the third and the fourth. After seven rounds of competition, I was the last one to survive it. So I was on a national television prime-time show. And believe it or
11、not, that was the first show on Chinese television that allowed its hosts to speak out of their own minds without reading an approved script. (Applause) And my weekly audience at that time was between 200 to 300 million people.Well after a few years, I decided to go to the U.S. and Columbia Universi
12、ty to pursue my postgraduate studies, and then started my own media company, which was unthought of during the years that I started my career. So we do a lot of things. Ive interviewed more than a thousand people in the past. And sometimes I have young people approaching me say, Lan, you changed my
13、life, and I feel proud of that. But then we are also so fortunate to witness the transformation of the whole country. I was in Beijings bidding for the Olympic Games. I was representing the Shanghai Expo. I saw China embracing the world and vice versa. But then sometimes Im thinking, what are todays
14、 young generation up to? How are they different, and what are the differences they are going to make to shape the future of China, or at large, the world?So today I want to talk about young people through the platform of social media. First of all, who are they? What do they look like? Well this is
15、a girl called Guo Meimei - 20 years old, beautiful. She showed off her expensive bags, clothes and car on her microblog, which is the Chinese version of Twitter. And she claimed to be the general manager of Red Cross at the Chamber of Commerce. She didnt realize that she stepped on a sensitive nerve
16、 and aroused national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of Red Cross. The controversy was so heated that the Red Cross had to open a press conference to clarify it, and the investigation is going on.So far, as of today, we know that she herself made up that title - probably beca
17、use she feels proud to be associated with charity. All those expensive items were given to her as gifts by her boyfriend,who used to be a board member in a subdivision of Red Cross at Chamber of Commerce. Its very complicated to explain. But anyway, the public still doesnt buy it. It is still boilin
18、g. It shows us a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions, which lacked transparency in the past. And also it showed us the power and the impact of social media as microblog.Microblog boomed in the year of 2010, with visitors doubled and time spent on it tripled. S, a major n
19、ews portal, alone has more than 140 million microbloggers. On Tencent, 200 million.The most popular blogger - its not me - its a movie star, and she has more than 9.5 million followers, or fans. About 80 percent of those microbloggers are young people, under 30 years old. And because, as you know, t
20、he traditional media is still heavily controlled by the government,social media offers an opening to let the steam out a little bit. But because you dont have many other openings, the heat coming out of this opening is sometimes very strong, active and even violent.So through microblogging, we are a
21、ble to understand Chinese youth even better. So how are they different? First of all, most of them were bornin the 80s and 90s, under the one-child policy. And because of selected abortion by families who favored boys to girls, now we have ended up with 30 million more young men than women. That cou
22、ld pose a potential danger to the society, but who knows; were in a globalized world, so they can look for girlfriends from other countries. Most of them have fairly good education. The illiteracy rate in China among this generation is under one percent. In cities, 80 percent of kids go to college.B
23、ut they are facing an aging China with a population above 65 years old coming up with seven-point-some percent this year, and about to be 15 percent by the year of 2030. And you know we have the tradition that younger generations support the elders financially, and taking care of them when theyre si
24、ck. So it means young coupleswill have to support four parents who have a life expectancy of 73 years old.So making a living is not that easy for young people. College graduates are not in short supply.In urban areas, college graduates find the starting salary is about 400 U.S. dollars a month, whil
25、e the average rent is above $500. So what do they do? They have to share space - squeezed in very limited space to save money - and they call themselves tribe of ants. And for those who are ready to get married and buy their apartment, they figured out they have to work for 30 to 40 years to afford
26、their first apartment. That ratio in Americawould only cost a couple five years to earn, but in China its 30 to 40 years with the skyrocketing real estate price.Among the 200 million migrant workers, 60 percent of them are young people. They find themselves sort of sandwiched between the urban areas
27、 and the rural areas. Most of them dont want to go back to the countryside, but they dont have the sense of belonging. They work for longer hours with less income, less social welfare. And theyre more vulnerable to job losses, subject to inflation,tightening loans from banks, appreciation of the ren
28、minbi, or decline of demand from Europe or America for the products they produce. Last year, though, an appalling incident in a southern OEM manufacturing compound in China: 13 young workers in their late teens and early 20s committed suicide, just one by one like causing a contagious disease. But t
29、hey died because of all different personal reasons. But this whole incident aroused a huge outcry from society about the isolation, both physical and mental, of these migrant workers.For those who do return back to the countryside,they find themselves very welcome locally,because with the knowledge,
30、 skills and networksthey have learned in the cities, with the assistance of the Internet, theyre able to create more jobs,upgrade local agriculture and create new businessin the less developed market. So for the past few years, the coastal areas, they found themselves in a shortage of labor.These di
31、agrams show a more general social background. The first one is the Engels coefficient,which explains that the cost of daily necessitieshas dropped its percentage all through the past decade, in terms of family income, to about 37-some percent. But then in the last two years, it goes up again to 39 p
32、ercent, indicating a rising living cost. The Gini coefficient has already passed the dangerous line of 0.4. Now its 0.5 - even worse than that in America - showing us the income inequality. And so you see this whole society getting frustrated about losing some of its mobility. And also, the bitterne
33、ss and even resentment towards the rich and the powerful is quite widespread. So any accusations of corruptionor backdoor dealings between authorities or business would arouse a social outcry or even unrest.So through some of the hottest topics on microblogging, we can see what young people care mos
34、t about. Social justice and government accountability runs the first in what they demand.For the past decade or so, a massive urbanization and development have let us witness a lot of reports on the forced demolition of private property.And it has aroused huge anger and frustrationamong our young ge
35、neration. Sometimes people get killed, and sometimes people set themselves on fire to protest. So when these incidents are reported more and more frequently on the Internet,people cry for the government to take actions to stop this.So the good news is that earlier this year, the state council passed
36、 a new regulation on house requisition and demolition and passed the right to order forced demolition from local governments to the court. Similarly, many other issues concerning public safety is a hot topic on the Internet. We heard about polluted air, polluted water, poisoned food. And guess what,
37、 we have faked beef. They have sorts of ingredients that you brush on a piece of chicken or fish, and it turns it to look like beef.And then lately, people are very concerned about cooking oil, because thousands of people have been found refining cooking oil from restaurant slop. So all these things
38、 have aroused a huge outcry from the Internet. And fortunately, we have seen the government responding more timely and also more frequently to the public concerns.While young people seem to be very sure about their participation in public policy-making, but sometimes theyre a little bit lost in term
39、s of what they want for their personal life. China is soon to pass the U.S. as the number one market for luxury brands - thats not including the Chinese expenditures in Europe and elsewhere. But you know what, half of those consumers are earning a salary below 2,000 U.S. dollars. Theyre not rich at
40、all. Theyre taking those bags and clothes as a sense of identity and social status. And this is a girl explicitly saying on a TV dating show that she would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.But of course, we do have young people who would still prefer to smile, whether in a BMW or on a bic
41、ycle.So in the next picture, you see a very popular phenomenon called naked wedding, or naked marriage. It does not mean they will wear nothing in the wedding, but it shows that these young couples are ready to get married without a house, without a car, without a diamond ring and without a wedding
42、banquet, to show their commitment to true love. And also, people are doing good through social media. And the first picture showed us that a truck caging 500 homeless and kidnapped dogsfor food processing was spotted and stopped on the highway with the whole country watchingthrough microblogging. Pe
43、ople were donating money, dog food and offering volunteer work to stop that truck. And after hours of negotiation, 500 dogs were rescued. And here also people are helping to find missing children. A father posted his sons picture onto the Internet. After thousands of unclear, the child was found, an
44、d we witnessed the reunion of the family through microblogging.So happiness is the most popular word we have heard through the past two years. Happiness is not only related to personal experiences and personal values, but also, its about the environment. People are thinking about the following quest
45、ions: Are we going to sacrifice our environment further to produce higher GDP? How are we going to perform our social and political reform to keep pace with economic growth, to keep sustainability and stability? And also, how capable is the systemof self-correctness to keep more people contentwith a
46、ll sorts of friction going on at the same time?I guess these are the questions people are going to answer. And our younger generation are going to transform this country while at the same time being transformed themselves.Thank you very much.杨澜TED演讲：重塑中国的一代 中文演讲稿 在来爱尔兰的前一晚，我应邀主持了中国达人秀在上海的体育场和八万现场观众。
47、 猜猜谁是表演嘉宾？苏珊大妈。我告诉她，“我明天要去爱尔兰了。” 她歌声犹如天籁。而且她还可以说点中文。 “送你葱。” 这不是“你好、谢谢”之类的日常用语。这组词翻译过来是免费给你青葱，为什么她要说这个呢？因为这是我们中国版的苏珊大妈很有名的一句歌词。 这位五十几岁的大妈在上海以贩卖蔬菜为生。她喜欢西方的歌剧，但是她不懂任何外语，所以她就把中文蔬菜名填做歌词。当她在体育场里 唱到今夜无人入眠的最后一句时，她唱的是“送你葱”。苏珊大妈和全场八万观众一起唱“送你葱”，多有意思的场面。 我想苏珊大妈和这位在上海做蔬菜买卖的都属于不同寻常的人。在业界所谓的娱乐圈，他们最不可能取得成功，但是他们的勇气和
48、才华让他们成功了。一场秀，一个平台给了他们实现梦想的舞台。与众不同不难，从不同的角度看我们都是不一样的。我认为与众不同是好的，因为你有不同的看法，这给你机会去产生不同的影响。 我们这代人有幸见证和参与了过去二三十年中国的历史性的转型。我记得在九十年代，刚从大学毕业的我申请了一份在北京五星级酒店销售部的工作。在日本经理一个半小时的面试后，他最后说：“杨小姐，你有什么问题要问我吗？”我鼓起勇气，定定神然后问道：“您能告诉我销售部到底销售什么？”我对于五星级酒店的销售部的职责一点都摸不着头脑。那是我在五星级酒店的第一天。 同时，我和上千名大学女生参加了一场由中国中央电视台举办的史无前例的公开选拔。制
49、作人告诉我们他们想找一位可爱，天真，美丽的新面孔。当轮到我时，我站起来说道，“为什么女孩在电视上必须是漂亮，甜美，无邪的，像个花瓶？为什么她们不能有她们的想法，她们自己的声音？” 我想我一定得罪了评委。但是事实上，我的发言给他们留下了深刻的印象。接下来我进入了第二轮的选拔，然后是第三轮，第四轮。在经过七轮的选拔后，我胜出了。成为了一个国家电视台黄金时段节目的主持人。 不管你们相不相信，那是中国电视上第一个节目可以允许主持人自由发挥而不是去读审查后的稿子。这个节目的观众人数高达两到三千万。 几年后，我决定去美国哥伦比亚大学进修。之后我有了自己的传媒公司，这是在我刚毕业的时候想都不敢想的。 我和我的团队做了很多事情。在过去的这些年
