Facing this audience on the stage, I have the exciting
feeling of participating in the march of history, for what we are
facing today is more than a mere competition or contest. It is an
assembly of some of China's most talented and motivated people,
representatives of a younger generation that are preparing
themselves for the coming of a new century. I'm grateful that I've
been given this opportunity, at such a historic moment, to stand
here as a spokesman of my generation and to take a serious look
back at the past 15 years, a crucial period for every one of us and
for this nation as well. Though it is only within my power to tell
about my personal experience, and only a tiny fragment of it at
that, it still represents, I believe, the root of a spirit which
has been essential to me and to all the people bred by the past 15
years. In my elementary years, there was a little girl in the class
who worked very hard but somehow could never do satisfactorily in
her lessons. The