衞周安教务长2021届本科生毕业典礼致辞全文（中英）
上海纽约大学2021届本科生毕业典礼致辞
教务长 | 衞周安
Chancellor Tong! President Hamilton! Vice-Chancellor Lehman! Friends! Colleagues! Parents! Ladies and Gentlemen, Near and Far! Salute with me our great students of the Class of 2021! Dear students, on behalf of the whole NYU Shanghai community, from the bottom of my heart I offer you warm congratulations upon your graduation.
童世骏校长、Hamilton校长、雷蒙校长，朋友们、同事们、毕业生家长们，女士们、先生们，请和我一起恭喜2021届的毕业生们！各位毕业生，我谨代表上海纽约大学全体成员，对你们致以最衷心的祝贺！
During the second half of your college career assumptions have been upended, plans disrupted, differences exacerbated, societies divided, and families separated. And yet the pandemic “may yet have some part to play in our lives, for good or evil,” which is another way of saying that we cannot tell how things will turn out—for “even the very wise cannot see all ends”. Those words paraphrase what Gandalf tells Frodo in The Lord of the Rings (a book that I read for the first time almost 48 years ago on the train travelling to Beijing across Siberia from Moscow). In other words, we should recognize that, notwithstanding all the unpredictability and all the difficulties that you may experience, useful lessons can be learned, new understandings can be brought to bear, and you may find yourself going in unexpected but beneficial new directions.
在你们大学生活的下半场，许多事情都发生了变化：假设被颠覆，计划被打乱，分歧在加剧，社会在分裂，家庭被分离。然而，疫情“对我们生活的影响仍将继续，这一影响可好可坏”，也就是说，我们现在尚且无法知道事情将如何发展，因为 “即使智者也无法预言所有的结局”。这两句话套用了《指环王》中甘道夫对佛罗多说的话（我第一次读这本书，是在48年前从莫斯科到北京穿越西伯利亚的火车上）。换句话说，我们应该认识到，尽管你可能会经历许多未知和困难，但你也将学到有用的经验、获得全新的理解，且可能会发现自己朝着意想不到但有益的新方向前进。
By now you all know that an NYU Shanghai education has many distinctive features. I will refer to three of those today. One is the development of multicultural competence that comes with being members of an institution with a double identity; it means that one reflexively grasps the possibilities of multiple perspectives or, put differently, to learn that a glass that seems half full from one point of view can seem half empty from another. A second distinctive feature is the acquisition of negative capability, the ability to hold contradictory meanings or explanations in one’s mind simultaneously. And a third is the conscious quest to acquire new knowledge from as broad as possible a range of areas, so as to put oneself in a position to unite different and apparently disparate elements of one’s knowledge and experience so as to come up with fresh insights. We have frequently drawn your attention to the fact that this capacity of bringing together is the core of creativity, and that human creativity is the core of success in a world in which machines will take over most routine tasks.
作为亲历者，你们都知道上海纽约大学的教育具有许多与众不同的特质。我今天将提到其中的三个。一是对多元文化能力的培养。这得益于上纽大是一个具有双重身份的机构。多元文化能力意味着一个人可以本能地去掌握存在多种观点的可能性，换句话说，一个人可以直观地理解，同一个杯子从某个角度来看是半满的，而从另一个角度来看是半空的。二是对获得消极感受力的培育，即一个人在观念中可以同时接收具有互斥性意义或解释的能力。第三是对从尽可能广泛的领域内自觉探究新知的重视，这一探究有助于将一个人知识与经验中有差异性及迥然不同的元素整合起来，从而创造新知。我们经常强调，这种整合能力就是创造力的核心，而人类的创造力正是在一个机器将接管大多数常规工作的世界中取得成功的核心。
What I’m going to say now touches on all of those skills: multicultural competence, weighing simultaneous meanings for a single expression or idea, and the creative bringing together of, in this case, a set of current referents derived from Anglophone Western culture with icons of Chinese classical culture: combining, if you like, present and past, west and east.
我接下来的演讲内容将涉及所有这些能力：多元文化能力，权衡单一表达中多重含义的能力，以及创造性整合的能力，整合对象包括诸如当下源于英语文化的所指与中国古典文化的象征，现在和过去，西方和东方。
The illustration I want to speak to you about today came to me recently when I was thinking about Chinese garden culture, which took me to Yu garden, a sanctuary of great beauty and an embodiment of classical Chinese garden culture located right in the heart of our city of Shanghai—and one that I hope everyone here has visited or soon will. Chinese gardens generally contain a number of elements, including not only plants but also rocks, water, borrowed views, openings, architecture, and winding paths and bridges. It is the winding character of the paths and bridges that I want to talk about now. At Yu garden, for example, there is a famous zigzag bridge with 9 turns (九曲桥), as well as many 3-bend bridges and paths. None of them is straight but all of them get you where you are going and send you onwards. The zigzag bridge is based on two principles. The first relies on the idea drawn from Chinese geomancy, fengshui, that linear paths are unlucky and bends help distract evil spirits. The second postulates that the zigzag or more indirect passage to your intended destination allows you to see the same vistas from different and sometimes unexpected angles, and to gain new perspectives as you make your way across. What once was hidden from view may become visible, and what becomes visible may bring fresh vistas or insights. This principle could well be applied in a more metaphorical way to scholarly research or to the pursuit of one’s goals more generally.
今天想和大家举的例子，源于我近期对中国园林文化的思考。在这个思考驱动下，我去了一趟豫园。豫园是一个极具美感的圣地，很好地彰显了中国古典园林文化，就在我们上海的中心地带。在座的各位可能都去过，或有机会可以去参观一下。中国园林通常包含许多元素，不仅包括植物，还有岩石、水、借景、开口、建筑以及蜿蜒的路径和桥梁。我想和大家探讨的是小路和桥梁的蜿蜒特点。在豫园，有一座著名的九曲桥，以及许多三弯桥和路径。它们没有一个是直的，但都能带你抵达你的目的地，让你继续前进。“之”字形桥的设计基于两个原则。第一个原则来源于中国风水学的观点，中国风水中认为直冲的道路是不吉的，而曲线有助于去形除煞。第二个原则假设，“之 ”字形或其他更间接抵达目的地的路径，可以让你从不同的、有时是意想不到的角度看到同样的风景，并在穿越的过程中获得新的视角。曾被隐藏的东西或脱隐而显，而脱隐而显的东西或带来新的景象或见解。这一原则对从事学术研究或追求其他个人目标来说，也值得我们思考和借鉴。
To me one of the great pleasures of Chinese culture is the extent to which cultural references crop up repeatedly in different places. This is not unique to China, of course—for instance many people raised in the Western tradition quote Shakespeare all the time, without necessarily even realizing that they are doing so—but here I want to emphasize the longevity and ubiquity of the notion of the benefits of the winding path in Chinese culture. I will mention just a couple of references here.
对我来说，中国文化的一大引人入胜之处在于同一文化用典可以在不同场合以不同程度被反复引用。这当然不是中国独有的，例如，许多在西方传统中长大的人经常引用莎士比亚，甚至不一定意识到他们在这样做。但在这里，我想强调中国文化中“曲径通幽”这一概念的持久性和普遍性。我将举两个例子。
The winding path is elegantly enshrined in Chinese literature over a period of more than a thousand years, in a four character phrase, 曲径通幽, that translates as “a winding path leads to mysteries” or “an indirect path penetrates what is hidden.” The locus classicus for this expression is an 8th-century Tang period poem by Chang Jian 常 建；then a full millennium later Bao Yu, hero of the great Qing novel 红楼梦, variously translated as “Dream of the Red Chamber” and “Story of the Stone,” memorably cites Chang Jian when he proposes the inscription of that very phrase at the entranceway to that most renowned of fictional gardens, the 大观园 (Prospect Garden) constructed for the visit of his royal sister. His purpose is to imply that it is “just a first step towards more important things ahead.”
一千多年来，“曲径通幽”被优雅地载入中国文学史，这四个字意思为“通向神秘之处的曲折小路”或“穿过隐蔽之处的迂回之路”。这句经典之作出自于公元八世纪唐朝诗人常建的一句诗。整整一千年后，清代小说《红楼梦》的主人公宝玉，给最负盛名的 “虚拟园林”、为了宝玉的皇妃姐姐所修的大观园山口新落成的亭阁题额“曲径通幽处”时，令人印象深刻地引用了常建。宝玉意在暗示，这“不过是探景一进步耳” 。
My mind itself wandering as I strolled around Yu garden, took me unexpectedly to the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ famous 1969 song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. This has been used and misused by others many times but today I want to draw attention just to these words: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want, but If You Try Sometimes You Find You Get What You Need.” If you don’t know the song, I strongly recommend you listen to the original sometime. It tells us that what you want may not be what you need—it may be more, or less, or different--and it suggests too that what you get may be just what you need, either in and of itself or so as to lead you on someplace else that you weren’t expecting to go. You can’t always get what you want but also you don’t always know what you need.
在豫园散步时，我的思绪和我一起在游荡，并意外地把我带到了滚石乐队1969年的名曲《你不可能总是得到你想要的》的歌词中。这句话已经被别人多次使用和误用，但今天我只想请大家留意这句歌词：“你不可能总是得到你想要的，但假如你有时尝试，你会发现，你会得到你需要的。”如果你不知道这首歌，我强烈建议你找个时间去听听原唱。它告诉我们，你想要的不一定是你需要的——它可能更多，或者更少，又或者不同。它也表明，你得到的可能正是你需要的东西，或是东西本身，或是为了带领你去到计划之外的地方。你不可能总是得到你想要的东西，但你也不一定知道你需要什么。
Class of 2021, what does this meditation on parallels between Chinese literature and Western popular culture mean for you as you set out on your life’s journey? First, it tells you that your dreams and ambitions may change, and that’s ok. Second, the pathways of one’s journey are rarely direct, but take twists and turns and even unforeseen detours. Pathways that run in a straight line without any deviation may in the end even be less productive than those that meander…and keep in mind that the journey itself is as much the point as the ultimate goal. Third, those twists and turns may well reveal things that previously were hidden and they may lead you in new and unexpected directions. These insights are all connected and to some extent reflect one another, like sunlight in a carefully planned garden pool.
2021届的同学们，在你们即将踏上人生旅途之时，这份基于中国文学和西方流行文化相似之处的沉思，对你们意味着什么？首先，它告诉你，你的梦想和志向可能会改变，这没关系。其次，人生之路很少是一路直途，相反，它充满曲折、甚至有不可预见的弯路。没有任何偏差的直线路径，最终可能还不如那些蜿蜒的路径更有成效......请记住，旅程本身和最终目标一样重要。再次，这些曲折很可能揭示出曾经隐而未现的东西，它们或能将你引向崭新的、意想不到的方向。这些视角相互联系，并在某种程度上相互映照，就像精心打理的花园水池中的簇簇阳光。
So, dear students, as you travel forwards through life, savor the twists and turns that fortune offers you, embrace the unexpected, remember that “even the very wise cannot see all ends,” and, to quote Gandalf one more time, that ‘[what happens in our times ] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,’ and how best to embrace the opportunities that come our way.
所以，亲爱的同学们，当你们在生活中前行时，请品味命运为你们提供的曲折，拥抱意外，记住 “即使智者也无法预言所有的结局”。此外，再一次引用甘道夫的话，“（在我们的时代发生什么）不是由我们决定的，我们所要决定的是如何利用赐予我们的时间”，以及如何最好地拥抱来到我们身边的机会。
Thank you!
谢谢！
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