The moment that Jiang Mengnan received the Touching China Person of the Year Award for 2021, she said she most wanted to express her gratitude to her parents. Born in 1992 in Yizhang county, Hunan Province, Jiang's world has been silent since she was 6 months old, when ototoxic (耳毒性的) drugs she was given irreparably damaged her hearing. So, Jiang's parents, both middle school teachers, taught her to learn vocalization and lip reading.
Jiang put her hands on the throats of her parents when they talked and felt the vibration (震动) of the vocal cords (声带) to learn to speak. When reading Pinyin, she carefully looked at the lips of other people's pronunciations to know the formation of each syllable. Mastering a single word can take at least 1000 practice attempts for Jiang, and different people having different mouth movements added difficulty to her social contacts and school life.
Through lip reading and self-study, she was able to keep up with learning and was accepted by Jilin University School of Pharmacy (药学) . In 2018, she was accepted as a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University's School of Life Sciences. Because of her hearing loss, she couldn't be a doctor. Instead, she chose pharmacy to help reduce people's pain and assist their recovery.
Jiang's story is one of victory over adversity. More importantly, she is helping inspire disabled children to struggle for success. She stressed that people with disabilities have no need to feel discouraged. When God closes a door, he opens a window, and this girl believes that all challenges are gifts.
