walls and bridges

Thank you, ladies and gentleman. My topic today is “walls and bridges”. I’m studying in a city famous for its city walls. All visitors to my city are amazed by the imposing sight of the city walls, silhouetted by the setting sun with gold and shining lines. With old, cracked bricks patched with lichen, the walls are weather-beaten guards, standing still for centuries in protecting the city. Our ancestors liked to build walls. They built walls in Beijing, Xi’an,Nanjng and many other cities, and they built the Great Wall which snakes through half of country. They built walls to ward off the enemies and evil spirits. This tradition has been maintained to this day as we still have many schools and paks walled off from the public.

I grew up at the foot of city walls, and I have loving them since my childhood. From a long time, walls were one of the most natural things in the world. My perception, however, changed after a hiking trip to the Eastern Suburbs, a scenic area of my city. My classmates and I were walking with some international students. As we walked out of the city, we found ourselves flanked by taller and taller trees, which formed a huge canopy above our heads. Suddenly an international student asked me, “where is the entrance to the Eastern Suburbs.”“we have already in the suburbs.”So I replied. E seemed taken aback. “I thought you Chinese have walls for everything.”His remark set off a heated debate.

At one point, he likened our walled cities to “jails”, while I insisted that Eastern Suburbs was one of the many places in china that had no walls. That debate had no winners, but I did learn a lot from this international student. For instance, he told me universities like Oxford and Cambridge were just a part of the cities, I have to admit that we do have many walls in china, and as we are developing our country, we must carefully examine them, whether they are physical or intangible.

We will tear down some walls, and we will keep some of them……

So my experience will not be repeated. Barriers will be replaced by bridges. Through an inter-library loan system, we will have access to books from any library.

With globalization, with china integrated into the world, I believe many of these intangible walls will be knocked down.

I know globalization is a controversial issue, and it’s hard for us to say whether it is good or bad. But one thing is for sure: it draws our attention to china’s physical and intangible walls and forces us to examine their roles in the modern world.

中国墙的作用

Then what about the walls in my city and other cities? Should we tear down? Just the opposite.My city, like Beijing and other cities, is actually making a great effort to preserve the walls. These walls now not only historians and archeologists, but also schoolchildren trying to study our history and cultural heritage. The walls have turned into bridges to our past and to the rest of the world. If the ancient builders of these walls were still alive today, they would be proud to see such a great change in the roles of their walls. They are now cultural bridges that link East and West, South and North, and all the countries of the world. Our cultural heritage will survive globalization.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentleman.