Mengnan Jiang 江梦南
Biology
Introduction
Jiang Mengnan was born in 1992 to a Yao (China ethnic minority) family in Yizhang County, Chenzhou City, Hunan Province. Her parents named her to symbolize the dream of Jiangnan and the peacefulness of the years. When she was half a year old, her peaceful and beautiful life was shattered when she suffered from severe neurological deafness due to ototoxic drugs. At that time, Jiang Mengnan had a loss of more than 105 decibels in her left ear and a complete loss of hearing in her right ear. With the loss of hearing, not only will she not be able to hear the outside world, but she will also not be able to hear her own pronunciation, and then will lose the ability to speak.
Since both of her parents are middle school teachers, in Jiang’s mind, her parents are the persons who love reading and have a wide horizon of the world. In order to help Jiang integrate into society more easily, her parents decided to teach her how to talk directly instead of sign language. Because of her parents' persistence, Jiang Mengnan has been able to overcome seemingly insurmountable mountains in her life. Learning to speak with her lips and practicing her speech allowed her to communicate normally with others, and also allowed her to "sit in" on classes at a regular school. Because she couldn't see the teacher's mouth during the entire lesson, Jiang Mengnan worked several times harder than her classmates by reading the board and studying on her own during class.
Relying on learning lips, reading teachers' boards, and self-study, Jiang Mengnan not only entered Jilin University's School of Pharmacy with 615 points in the college entrance exam but also won several scholarships, then continued to finish her graduate degree at Jilin University and passed the Ph.D. interview at Tsinghua University's School of LifeSciences.In September 2018, Jiang officially entered Tsinghua University to begin her PhD studies.
Difficulty and how to overcome
As someone who has lost her hearing since childhood, there is no way for her to learn as much as a normal student by listening alone. Especially since she attends a non-specialized school, the difficulties this poses for her are immense. At the same time, some of the difficulties she suffers come from the invisible discrimination she experiences from society and those around her. She overcame these difficulties most of all because of her unwillingness to give in to her destiny. Even though she was physically different from ordinary people, she still studied hard and did not give in to difficulties, which ultimately made her who she was. And at the same time, her family had a huge impact on her, it was the support of her parents that enabled her to have the courage to overcome her difficulties.
