Jiang Mengnan has a Master’s in pharmacy and is now doing her Ph.D. in Tsinghua University, one of China’s most prestigious academic institutions. It’s not just a matter of personal achievement for a young woman from a small town and an ethnic minority – she comes from a Yao family in Chenzhou, a city in Hunan Province, central China, it is an inspiration for a community that faces great odds: people with a hearing loss.
Jiang lost her hearing when she was six months old after she had pneumonia. Following her recovery, her parents soon discovered that she no longer responded to outside sounds. After going to different hospitals, they were told by all the doctors that their daughter had a hearing loss and would remain deaf all her life. Since then, Jiang’s life has been spent in a silent world. Over the years through phenomenal effort, she mastered the skill of lip reading, and incredibly, learned to speak in an unimpaired manner even though she could barely hear her own voice.
“I seldom thought of it as a disadvantage. When I was a little girl, my father would always tell me, ‘Everyone has their own problems, some have them on the inside, and others on the outside. The weak weep; the strong only forge ahead,’” Jiang told China Today.
Jiang Mengnan at Tsinghua University.
A Difficult Beginning
Jiang’s parents are both junior high school teachers. Before Jiang was born, they had great expectations of her, and were confident that they would cultivate their child into someone exceptional. Learning that their little girl would remain deaf for the rest of her life came as a great blow to the couple. But they persevered. They were believers in science. After pulling themselves together, they decided to go as far as they could to explore the boundaries which the pall of dark destiny had cast on them.
In retrospect, Jiang still felt it was extremely challenging in the beginning. Back then, there was this widely held perception that more than nine in 10 deaf people were speech-impaired. But her mother still attended the special education training for teachers at a local speech rehabilitation center for deaf children at her own expense. At home, they trained her every day.
“When we were at home, I wore an old hearing-aid. Every day, with my back to my mother, I sat in her arms with a mirror in front of us, through which I could see the shape of both our mouths. My mother took my hand and placed it on her throat so that I could feel the vibration of the vocal cords and the air flow of the corresponding breathing, and then I practiced on my own throat to learn the relationship between the vibration of the throat and the change of the mouth’s shapes.” Jiang remembered, “None of us knew if, with such training, I would ever be able to speak like a normal child; we just persistently repeated it over and over again.”
In addition, to better lip read Mandarin, she would sit in front of the TV in the company of her parents, watching the anchors’ mouths attentively day after day, night after night.
Their efforts gradually paid off. From an initial simple “Ah” sound, Jiang began to spell out more complex syllables, and was able to distinguish the tones of Chinese characters. By the time she was two years old, her language skills were no different from those of her peers. She could finally say “dad” and “mom” clearly and speak Mandarin and Yizhang dialect. By seven, she was quite able to “see” what others were saying, and then got enrolled in a local public elementary school to participate in normal social life.
An Arduously Long Journey
Life on campus was a little different. While teaching, the teachers would turn their back to students, and they would walk around, in which case, Jiang always failed to catch what they were saying. Her parents figured out a way: they taught her in advance. Jiang recalled she almost had no vacations or weekends, spending all her time studying, but she said she enjoyed the precious family time.
It was always easy to lose hope in difficult situations. As she grew up, Jiang began to realize she was different from her peers, and such difference created obstacles in her life. She could not communicate freely with others. Sometimes in groups, children would distance themselves from her because she had problems interacting well with others.
There were moments she felt life was unfair, and often asked herself “Why am I suffering from this?” Her way out was to try harder. At 12, she chose to go to a boarding middle school far away in the city, which was better than the local one, so that she would have the greater chance to excel. She studied very hard.
“I’ve never put myself in the position of a weak person. I don’t want people to lower any standards for me, or amplify what I’ve done well because of my lost hearing,” said Jiang. To her, it almost became the norm to be in such adversity constantly, and she gradually found a way to reconcile herself with it.
Jiang did quite well during her school life. She got admitted to Jilin University, and then made it all the way to Tsinghua.
“I could not take back my hearing from fate, but I could still shine. It has been a tremendously long journey, and I was on the verge of giving up many, many times – but I am glad I didn’t,” Jiang said.
For a More Obstacle-Free Society
The summer before she went to Tsinghua, Jiang finally decided to receive a cochlear implant in her right ear – considering the risks of the surgery and the fact that she has mastered the ability to communicate with people, she and her parents had refused the surgery before. But this time, she wanted to move one step forward, to tap deeper into her potential.
With the cochlear implant, she regained some of the hearing she had lost for 26 years. She is now able to hear and distinguish many sounds: the honking of car horns, the bell ringing after class, her parents’ voices, her own voice, etc. The world is so different, so noisy from before, but she feels safe and at ease.
In Tsinghua, she saw a bigger world. She joined the Students Society for Accessibility Studies and changed her thought about her social identity.
“In the past, I didn’t want people to label me as ‘hearing-impaired,’ or a girl with disabilities. But after I become a member of that society, I came to realize that I am willing to identify myself with such a group of people. I began to think if the whole society could treat all kinds of people equally, and if public places were fully equipped with barrier-free facilities, people with disabilities could live just as freely and easily as anyone else,” Jiang observed. She is willing to share her story with anyone in need since she herself has received much kindness over the years.
“When I was little, the local public school system did not prevent me from enrolling. For key exams, such as the national college entrance examination, the state has issued policies to facilitate the participation of the impaired. Candidates with a hearing impairment are allowed to skip the English listening part, and get a score according to just their written test. When I was in college, the faculty and students of Jilin University also tried their best to help me,” she said as she recalled her past experience with gratefulness.
Jiang will graduate from Tsinghua this summer. Her hope is to help more people with what she has learned, to comfort and cure those in pain. Jiang said she no longer pushes herself to the limit all the time now, and also takes time out to cherish friends and family, and enjoys her life.
Jiang remembers how she was touched by hearing the twittering of a bird on the campus of Tsinghua one morning for the first time. It was a beautiful, remote sound, a sound she had imagined about for years. She was thrilled and looked up at the sky as if it was the voice of a long-lost friend.
