At the age of 26, Jiang Mengnan heard the cuckoo call for the first time.
It was on the campus of Tsinghua University, and she was passing through the woods while she was running in the morning, and a strange voice came into her ears. She stopped to hear more clearly—regaining her hearing, distinguishing whether the sounds in her head came from illusion or reality was a puzzle she had to solve.
Until then, she knew that bird calls were "nice" and "gentle" sounds, but she had never experienced the true meaning of these adjectives. At half a year old, she was deaf in her right ear due to improper medication for pneumonia, and lost 105 decibels in her left ear – almost equivalent to the hearing of a helicopter taking off.
In the days that followed, thanks to hearing aids, she was able to live in a world that was not completely silent.
"It was a vague, chaotic sound." Jiang Mengnan struggled to describe her previous 26 years of hearing world.
No one knows what kind of sound that is. She is a doctor of bioinformatics at Tsinghua University, and her self-denying personality, coupled with long-term scientific training, has given her a kind of obsession with "precision". But in the world of sound, she is a full-fledged beginner, and it is difficult to accurately describe a sound, even if it is a voice that surrounds her ears for many years.
All along, she has been "listening" in other ways. Her parents taught her to read lips from an early age, and you don't have to deliberately slow down when communicating with her. Her fingers are sensitive to the touch and can feel different vibrations of sound. Sometimes, she is even a girl with good hearing, such as in a noisy environment, she will "listen" to the content of the conversation more easily than the average person.
Her parents also taught her to speak, speak, and even the dialect of her hometown of Yizhang County, Hunan. She did not attend special education schools, but has been studying in public schools. She didn't leave a lesson behind or even skip a grade. Judging from the results, her study experience was smoother than most people, becoming the only student in her hometown in recent years to be admitted to a key university and eventually to Tsinghua university for a doctorate.
Before reporting to Tsinghua University in 2018, she had cochlear implant surgery. The cuckoo chirping, the roar of the rain, the chirping of cicadas at night... These sounds, which once existed only in words and imaginations, gradually became clearer along with the whole world.
Born to the sun, to the good. The most shining moments of human nature touch China all the time. On the evening of March 3, 2022, the 2021 Moving China Annual Person Awards Ceremony was broadcast on CCTV, and Jiang Mengnan, a girl from Chenzhou, Hunan Province, was elected as the 2021 Moving China Person of the Year.
Text | Yang Hai
1
Jiang Mengnan was born in a Yao town called Mangshan, his parents are junior high school teachers, and he is one of the few people in the town who pays attention to the mood of life. They pinned their poetry on their daughters, who followed their mother's surname according to ethnic customs, and the name was "the years are quiet, and the dreams of Jiangnan" means.
For a long time, Jiang Mengnan was indeed a quiet child. She rarely made a fuss and never spoke. Her parents frequently shook the key next to her, or clapped their hands, hoping to get her response, and the adults tried their best to make her laugh, but most of the time all they saw was her wooden expression.
There is a kind of "wow wow" children's game, where children open their mouths and continue to make "ah" sounds, and then keep patting their mouths with their hands. Mengnan will also imitate, she follows the other children to open their mouths and make gestures, but there is no sound.
Mangshan is named after "the forest sea is mangy, there are pythons haunting", and until now, there are still large areas of primeval forest here. Mangshan Township is surrounded by mountains, and it is 80 kilometers to the county seat, making it the most remote township in the county. In the early 1990s, there was no Internet, and the cramped physical space surrounded by mountains built almost the entire world of the town's residents.
In this closed environment, Mengnan's father has the purity and pride of a reader. After getting married, he contracted a tea garden on the mountain and planned to take his wife and children to enjoy tea and flowers on weekends.
He considered himself an intellectual, and before his daughter was born, he was confident that "he could not be worse than other people's children" and that "at the very least, he should go to a key university, preferably Tsinghua Peking University." ”
Accepting the fact that her daughter can't hear is a long and painful process. When Mengnan was 9 months old, the couple took her to Hunan Xiangya Hospital for examination and concluded that she was "extremely severe neurotic deafness". The two did not want to believe it, ran to another large hospital to do the same set of examinations, no accidents, hopes were shattered again.
On Jiang Mengnan's 3rd birthday, her parents took her to Beijing to see a doctor and take a photo in Tiananmen Square.
Before the child was 3 years old, the couple took advantage of weekends and holidays to frequently take Mengnan to Changsha, Beijing and other places to see a doctor. The doctors kindly advised that it would be futile to look at it again, "When the child is older, send it to the special education school and learn sign language."
Couples had pinned their remaining hopes on hearing aids, but were quickly told by doctors that it meant nothing, "hearing aids are only suitable for patients with hearing losses below 95 decibels." For rural working families at that time, a few thousand yuan a pair of hearing aids was not a small amount, and the doctor was worried that after Mengnan put it on, he would only tear off this useless thing and drop it.
At that time, "ten deaf and nine dumb" was still a popular folk saying. The couple also prepared for the worst, and once after leaving the hospital in Changsha, they went to visit a local special education school.
"The children have given up the possibility of speaking, learn sign language with the teacher, and the whole classroom is silent." Mengnan's father recalled the scene at that time.
Mengnan's mother has other concerns, she can't bear that her child will leave her parents at a very young age and learn another set of rules and ways of doing things here.
What neither husband nor wife can accept is to let their daughter become a "deaf and mute" completely, gradually leaving mainstream society and entering another circle of life.
Monnan's father bishop mathematics and sometimes also teaches biology. Regarding his daughter's auditory system, the ear experts he had worked so hard to reach had given the most authoritative answers he could get.
Now, in spite of all this, his whole head is dominated by a strong belief: "Let your daughter be normal."
"Dead horses are treated as living horses." He decided.
In Mengnan's memory, when she was a child, she drank Chinese medicine and stabbed acupuncture. Her parents tried many "folk remedies" for her, but they were of little use.
Many relatives and friends around them also advised them to send Mengnan to a special education school, ask for another one, and start a new life. Mengnan's father rejected everyone's kindness, and in this matter, he once again showed his paranoia, vowing to "give all his love to his daughter".
It takes a lot of money to travel around for medical treatment, and the couple's salary is soon unsustainable. In addition to working and taking care of his daughter, Mengnan's father spent a lot of time in tea gardens and orchards. In those years, he was tanned and became an authentic tea farmer and fruit farmer.
When Mengnan was a child, every summer vacation, her parents would take her to the tea garden to play, which was the happiest time for the family in her memory. When she grew up, she realized that it was a world without troubles that her father had created for her.
Annoyance and stress were hidden in places she couldn't see. Mengnan's mother remembers that sometimes when she was sleeping in the middle of the night, her husband would suddenly sit up, scream loudly, sweat profusely, and "dream about the things he was most afraid of."
The income from the tea garden temporarily made up for the family expenses, Mengnan's father did not give up the hearing aid, the back of the ear type was too expensive, he bought a box for his daughter to try.
It was a somewhat outdated machine, more than 300 yuan, and the main engine was the same size as the BP machine at that time. He and his wife put it on first, turned the power to a minimum, and were still "startled" by the loud noise.
They were afraid that their daughter could not stand it, so they gradually increased the power, but they adjusted it until the maximum, and the daughter still did not respond to external sounds. "It's almost equivalent to a tweeter in your ear."
Sometimes when my daughter sleeps, they won't take off her hearing aids. Mengnan's father knew that what was always ringing in his daughter's ears was a "train whistling" sound. He felt sorry for his daughter, and hoped that in a moment, her daughter would suddenly be awakened by a loud noise.
This never happened, so much so that for a long time the couple didn't know what they were insisting on. Every morning, they would put on their daughter's hearing aids and "have nothing to say" to her.
Sometimes, Mengnan's father is like an ordinary father, taking care of himself to tell stories to his daughter. He was immersed in moments like that, forgetting even the fact that his daughter could not hear her own voice.
As a child, Jiang Mengnan was with his parents at a small river near his home.
2
The couple's expectation of their daughter's voice gradually turned into a longing.
Other parents are upset about their children's noise, but for them, even experiencing that kind of annoyance for only a second has become a luxury. After that, Mengnan's father lowered his expectations for his daughter, and he no longer dreamed that her daughter could get ahead.
"I'm satisfied if I can ask for money and go to the commissary to buy a bottle of soy sauce." He had to face the reality and hoped that his daughter would have basic life skills in the future.
Even such expectations were a bit too high for Mengnan at that time. After becoming parents, they have not heard their children shout "Daddy" and "Mommy". The couple had taught Monnan countless times, these two syllables that could be uttered almost by human instinct. Then stared at her daughter, longing for her to shout out, but each time she got a silent answer.
When Mengnan was 1 year and 4 months old, the couple did not know how many times they took her to Beijing to see a doctor. As in the past, it was another fruitless trip. Back at the residence, the couple packed their bags in silence with each other, and Mengnan fiddled with the toy ball on the side, accidentally rolling the ball down where she couldn't reach.
"Mom."
The couple froze momentarily. In the quiet room, they all heard their daughter's voice. It was a vague "aaaah" sound, but it didn't matter, and the daughter had the consciousness to take the initiative, which was enough to save them from the repeated disappointment.
They looked at each other, so excited that they could not speak, and even cried. After the mood calmed down, all night, they hardly closed their eyes, recalling their daughter's "Aaaah" sound. Both were greatly satisfied with this sound:
Mengnan's mother believes that her daughter is shouting "Mom", and Mengnan's father is convinced that the voice is calling "Daddy".
When she grew up, Mengnan analyzed the reason why she suddenly "spoke" - through the hearing aid, she could hear a weak voice, although she could not distinguish the direction of the sound source, nor could she hear the content of the sound.
"It's like garbled code." She explains that soundstage. Usually, the only role of the hearing aid is to help her feel the size of the sound in her surroundings so that she can adjust the volume of her speech.
This faint, seemingly meaningless voice became the straw for her to blend into the world of sound.
After returning home from Beijing, the couple firmly believed that their daughter could speak and speak normally. They held Monnan every day, starting with the simplest syllables, practicing lip synchronicity in front of the mirror and teaching her how to place her tongue.
At first, Mengnan only opened his mouth and made no sound. The couple let their daughters touch their throats, feel the vocal cords vibrate, put her hands in front of their mouths, and feel the airflow as they speak.
Mengnan's mother once used the summer vacation to study at a speech rehabilitation institution for deaf children in Changsha. She attended classes with children a few years old, and she was an adult in the whole classroom except for the teacher. But this did not prevent her from listening carefully to the lecture, and when she "graduated", she even got the first "speech rehabilitation" certificate in Yizhang County.
Mengnan's father bought back books on otology and speech rehabilitation and studied them all day. No one knew what the books were of use, until he "tossed" out a "feasibility report on the establishment of a speech rehabilitation guidance agency for deaf children in the county", and then a person took the pages to Chenzhou and handed them to the Municipal Disabled Persons' Federation.
"Speech rehabilitation is the real sense of healing. Centralized rehabilitation and family rehabilitation have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the deaf children's speech rehabilitation guidance agency can act as a bridge between the two, training parents and tracking guidance..." He analyzed in the report.
Mengnan gradually learned to speak, but she could not hear her own voice. Unlike ordinary people, she does not rely on auditory memory to compare and correct her pronunciation, but needs to remember each syllable, the shape of each word, and the shape and placement of the tongue.
Even if everything is perfect, it is difficult to coordinate vocal cord vibrations with changes in mouth shape and to mobilize the vocal cords to pronounce them accurately. It's a process of constant experimentation, "practicing each word a thousand times is less" until the parents nod.
Looking at the children who did not understand things, Mengnan's father did not know how effective such a training method would be. He said this method was "stupid", but he was determined that "stupid" should also be "stupid" to the end.
When Mengnan was a little older, the parents realized that their accents were too heavy and began to let their daughter practice on CCTV's news program. While other people's children are keen on cartoons, Mengnan is a veritable "news lover" — almost every day she has to carry a small bench and sit in front of the 21-inch TV at home, staring at the mouth of the announcer's uncle and aunt.
She watches at least three news shows a day, all of which are replayed because of the subtitles.
This intensive "listening" and speaking ability training continued until Mengnan was 6 years old. In addition to the fact that the words are not very clear, she has caught up with the speech level of children of her age, and even surpassed her own age in some ways — before going to elementary school, she had mastered pinyin and knew more words than children her age.
Now, the memory before the age of 6 has been blurred, and the difficult beginning of life only exists in the narration of parents, like other people's stories. But the skills she has acquired are forever engraved into her brain, and in the days to come, she will face both the injustices of fate and the unique gifts of fate.
3
Since elementary school, Mengnan has been sitting in the middle of the front row of the classroom. She needs to read the teacher's lip -- "listening to the lesson", but keeping up with the teacher's speed of speech is almost an impossible task - in the classroom, sometimes she needs to listen and watch, and sometimes the teacher will speak with her back to her classmates.
Most of the time, she relied on board books and then taught herself to catch up. It took up a lot of her spare time, but she had to do it again. Perhaps it is beyond the hard work of most of her peers, or perhaps the lack of hearing in exchange for an amazing memory, she is in her own rhythm step by step, but inadvertently walks ahead.
"She can memorize the idiom dictionary to more than 100 pages in perfect order." Mengnan's mother said.
By the summer vacation of the fourth grade, she had already completed the fifth grade curriculum. After passing the school test, she jumped straight to sixth grade.
In school, in addition to studying, Mengnan is also adapting to group life. She gradually realized that she was special, and when others called her behind her back, she would not get any response. In music class, her classmates sang together, and she could only read the lyrics along.
Classmates talked about Jay Chou, and when she saw them say" "This song is good", her eyes lit up.
One weekend afternoon, she sat in front of her computer and put on her headphones. Find those good songs in the mouths of your classmates, turn the volume up to the maximum, and try to feel it.
"I also want to know what it's like to be 'good to hear.'"
All afternoon, all she heard was nothingness, not even a single lyric. For her, music and melody are just abstract nouns, a few ordinary Chinese characters, and have no superfluous meaning.
Mengnan's father had long anticipated his daughter's troubles, and he always said to her, "Don't compare yourself with others." ”
"Some people are short-sighted and need to wear glasses. Some people have bad legs and feet, so they have to use crutches. He told his daughter, "You are no different from others, everyone has a problem and needs to overcome it themselves." ”
Dad's words had almost become her rule of survival. In her future life, she will encounter more difficulties: she will not hear alarms, she will not be able to answer the phone alone, she will not be able to hear the radio when she is at the airport train station...
With each new phase, new challenges arise. When she went to Tsinghua to study for a postdoctoral fellowship, the research group "brainstormed" with all kinds of tongues, and the more intense the discussion, the more she could not keep up with the rhythm.
But she always found her own solution. Doctors had told her that because of the severe hearing loss, her sense of balance would be very poor and it would be difficult to learn to ride a bicycle. Now, on the Tsinghua campus, she rides her bike to and from class every day, just as relaxed as everyone else.
She didn't need an alarm, but learned to hold her phone to sleep the whole time, and what woke her up every day was the vibration of an alarm clock.
Sometimes, not being able to hear becomes an advantage: "I don't have to worry about being woken up while I'm sleeping."
Mengnan's father often fell into a contradiction, he wanted to protect his daughter tightly, and had to push her out so that she could learn to survive in this world. He admits that his daughter knows things earlier than other children, but he never takes it as a relief.
He couldn't appreciate what it was like to live in a silent world, "it must be lonely." He decided to become his daughter's best friend forever.
When talking about his father, Mengnan's first thought was not his strictness, but his humor. When she was a child, she often went up the mountain with her father, dug up some wildflowers and weeds, took them home and transplanted them into pots, and then lay down together every day to observe and record their changes.
Until now, the father and daughter have maintained this equal relationship.
At the beginning of Xiaosheng, Mengnan took the second place in the city. She offered to go to Chenzhou No. 6 Middle School, more than 300 miles away, and "can't always live under the protection of her parents."
Mom disagrees, Dad is silent, and the two eventually agree and respect their daughter's choice. This is the first time that her daughter has lived alone in the city, and Mengnan's mother is worried that there are "many cars and many people" there, and her daughter's poor hearing will be dangerous and she will be bullied by her classmates. After the start of school, every weekend, she would go to Chenzhou to visit her daughter.
When he is with his mother in the city, Mengnan will hold his mother's arm and be anti-guest.
"To cross the road to take the zebra crossing, you must first look at the traffic lights, then observe left and right, and then go when there is no car." She told her mother, with a serious face.
The girls in the dormitory were all away from home for the first time, and they all cried to themselves at night. Mengnan's heart was soft, he couldn't see this, and went forward to comfort them.
In the eyes of many people, Mengnan is a strict and strong girl who is strict with herself. She said she grew up in a "hard mode" environment where everything became commonplace over time.
But more often than not, she was also an ordinary girl, just not seen. When she first arrived at Chenzhou Sixth Middle School, she had to re-adapt to the new teachers, which made the class more difficult. She was as homesick as her roommates, and after the lights went out that day, she hid in the bed and cried, without making a sound.
In 2010, she took the college entrance examination for the first time, and her score exceeded a line. She was not satisfied with her own play and chose to re-read.
The title of the college entrance examination essay in Hunan Province that year was "Early". In the examination room, she remembered that when she was a child, her parents took her every time it was not dawn, carrying a large bag and a small bag, to the side of the road in the town to wait for the bus. They took their daughter to see the ears and the coach left early.
She said that she wrote down the experience in tears, and when she came out of the examination room, she knew that she had run away from the question. After the results came out, her strong subject language just crossed the passing line, 99 points.
4
The following year, she was admitted to Jilin University. 3,000 kilometers away in Changchun, she did not let her parents accompany her, and took the train alone to report.
Because of her own experience, she wanted to choose a medical major, but immediately realized that doctors had to communicate with patients, and sometimes patients wore masks. She finally chose pharmacy, "the same can cure the disease and save people.".
In college, she not only studied, but sometimes watched her classmates perform their talents, sing and dance on stage, and she would also be curious about her own voice.
"Does my voice sound good?" Will students like it? ”
Friends would tell her that her voice was gentle. She was used to speaking in a controlled tone of voice, soft enough not to make people feel any aggression. She couldn't hear other people's yin and yang weirdness, nor would she have such high-level speaking skills.
She enjoys interacting with friends, including watching movies together and going to KTV parties together. She prefers to be treated as an ordinary person by others rather than being accommodating to herself.
"Isn't singing the purpose?" It's good that everyone is happy together. She said.
Sometimes, people really forget her missing hearing. Like many girls, she loves fitness, has a taste for fashion, and even sees more confidence in her. Most importantly, she has a scarce appeal to her—sincerity and kindness to others.
In the eyes of her friends, she is a good listener, "She will really care about you and have a strong ability to empathize." ”
Mengnan said that she rarely felt inferior because she could not hear, and she began to face this problem very early instead of avoiding it. When she was a child, her parents often took her out and asked her to communicate with people more.
"This is my daughter and she can't hear me." Mengnan's father would always introduce his daughter to others in this way, and he did not shy away from it.
In front of her, her parents never showed inferiority.
To some extent, a large part of Mengnan's world is built with the help of parents. They have let go as much as possible and allowed her to grow freely, but sometimes they must not act as their daughter's ears to make up for her missing hearing.
Language is her way of understanding the world, and for quite some time, Monnan could only learn language through her parents. Until now, she wouldn't swear because her parents had never taught her. When angry, she just uses the accentuated "hum" and "hmm" to express emotions.
Earlier, she didn't even know there was "dirty talk" in the world. When she was a child, when she saw others saying dirty words, she would ask her parents what the other person said.
"Oops, I didn't hear clearly." Mengnan's father always answered like this.
He admits that his daughter may be better educated than the average child, after all, most of the information she receives comes from her parents. At work, he has come into contact with many troubled teenagers, "like deaf people with normal hearing."
Sometimes, he also worries about his own way of education - filtering out too much gray and unbearable help for his daughter, so that she grows up too simple and kind, will she not be able to adapt after entering society?
In the end, he will convince himself that treating people sincerely will at least not get bad results, and pure and kind people may suffer losses in small things, but they will not make mistakes in big things.
Now, Mengnan has fulfilled her father's original expectations of her, admitted to a key university, and then walked to the tip of the ivory tower. He smiled and said, "Mangshan is probably the first one to enter Tsinghua Garden." ”
In fact, the first time Monnan called him "Daddy," he was already satisfied. Every breakthrough and progress of his daughter in the future has also activated his stinging ambition, but he can already face it calmly, "all are icing on the cake."
A family of three at Tsinghua University.
5
In the year of the first college entrance examination, Mengnan had the opportunity to get real listening. At that time, a public welfare project allowed her to implant a cochlear implant for free.
This is a big deal for the family, who have consulted doctors in Changsha, who do not recommend surgery. The family considered the risks of surgery, and Mengnan had fully mastered the ability to communicate with people and jointly decided to "maintain the status quo".
In 2018, Mengnan is about to graduate with a master's degree from Jilin University. After a local doctor in Changchun saw her story, the trustee "coaxed her" to take her to the consultation room and persuaded her to implant a cochlear implant.
"You've come so far, why don't you try it and see how likely your life is?" She was struck by the doctor's words.
That summer, after a successful cochlear implant in her right ear, she regained the hearing she had lost for 26 years.
At first, after spending too long in silence, she was not used to this world of sound. Even if the sensitivity of the cochlea is set to a very low level, she cannot withstand the "noise" of the outside world. Ordinary ambient sounds will make her feel that "her eyes are trembling.". Sometimes a plastic bottle fell lightly to the ground and she would be startled.
As she adjusted, she began to re-examine the world she was in, "it was noisy, that's what it always was." Every sound is fresh, the sound of the car whistle, the bell of the end of class, the sound of thunderstorms... And the singing she'd always wanted to feel.
Now, she likes to listen to soothing piano music, and even review Jay Chou's songs, even if she is still difficult to understand. On the Tsinghua campus, she rode a bicycle and connected her mobile phone directly to her cochlea, without the need for vibration, and electrical signals went directly to her brain. It was a moment when she was alone, and "it was hard for ordinary people to feel this wonderful experience."
Although she could speak and mastered the pronunciation of each word, she had never really heard them. For her, if she closes her eyes and listens to someone, it's like listening to a foreign language that she hasn't learned at all.
When she first had her cochlear implant, Monnan needed new speech rehabilitation training. Parents have daily video calls with their daughters. They first wrote down the content to be practiced that day in a notebook, then blocked their mouths and read it out in order for Mengnan to distinguish.
"Yizhang County", "Mangshan Township", "Taxi", "How to go to the station?" "First words, then words, then everyday words, densely packed with two notebooks.
Mengnan can't remember the process when her parents taught her to speak when she was a child, and now in some moments, she says that she seems to have experienced the feeling of sitting in her mother's arms and practicing lip strokes in front of the mirror more than 20 years ago.
After recovering her hearing, Mengnan still maintained the habit of text communication with her parents, and almost every day she had to send text messages and WeChat to her parents. At one point, the father didn't pay attention to the continuous messages from his daughter, and then the mobile phone rang.
The phone was connected, and the daughter seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, confirming that the parents who did not reply to the message in time were not encountering any problems. The father told his daughter that the mobile phone was not around, and the father and daughter exchanged a greeting, and then hung up the phone, and no one felt anything unusual.
Soon, he ran excitedly to his wife. For the first time in more than 20 years, he heard his daughter's voice on the phone.