Young woman with hearing loss wins award of People Who Moved China for 2021, aims for PhD at Tsinghua University

(Photo/CCTV News)

Jiang Mengnan, a young Chinese woman with hearing loss won the award of People Who Moved China for 2021. She is expected to receive her doctorate from the prestigious Tsinghua University at the end of this year.

When Jiang received the award, presented by Chinese broadcaster CCTV, she said she most wanted to express her gratitude to her parents.

(Photo/CCTV News)

Jiang said she still remembers what her parents told her: as hearing loss is a reality that can’t be changed, it’s better to work hard to overcome hardship rather than to complain.

Born into a family of the Yao ethnic group in central China’s Hunan Province, Jiang became deaf when she was six months old after medicine she was given irreparably damaged her hearing.

With the help of her parents, Jiang mastered lip reading at a young age. Thanks to this skill, she was able to attend a standard primary school.

Sitting in the front row, she followed the classes by reading the teachers’ lips. She said it was difficult to keep up with her teachers at first. She had to copy down content on the blackboard and study alone after class.

(Photo/CCTV News)

Her perseverance and hard work made her a top student. In 2011, Jiang was admitted to Jilin University in Changchun city, northeast China’s Jilin Province. After graduating in 2015, she began pursuing her masters degree in pharmacology at the same university. In 2018, she was accepted to the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University as a PhD student.

“I have never felt inferior for my hearing problem. I am no worse than others,” Jiang said.

She added that she wants to continue her research in pharmacology and contribute her solutions to problems of life and health.