Once every 12 months, the world's largest human migration happens in China. Over the 40-day travel period of Chinese New Year, three billion trips are taken, as families reunite and celebrate. Now, the most strenuous of these trips are taken by the country's 290 million migrant workers, for many of whom this is the one chance a year to go home and see parents and their left-behind children.

migration n. 迁移；移居；迁徙 

V-T If people are reunited, or if they reunite, they meet each other again after they have been separated for some time. 重聚

She and her youngest son were finally allowed to be reunited with their family.

她和她的小儿子最终被允许和他们的家庭团聚。

ADJ A strenuous activity or action involves a lot of energy or effort. 艰苦的; 剧烈的

Strenuous efforts had been made to improve conditions in the jail.

为改善那家监狱里的条件已做了艰苦的努力

农民工（migrant worker）

农民工;城市农民工(城市农民工是指在城市中从事二、三产业劳动的农民。)

left-behind girls 留守女童

left-behind 被抛之身后的

But the travel options are very limited; plane tickets cost nearly half of their monthly salary. So most of them, they choose the train. Their average journey is 700 kilometers.The average travel time is 15 and a half hours. And the country's tracks now have to handle 390 million travelers every Spring Festival. Until recently, migrant workers would have to queue for long hours -- sometimes days -- just to buy tickets, often only to be fleeced by scalpers. And they still had to deal with near-stampede conditions when travel day finally arrived.

V-I When people queue, they stand in a line waiting for something. 排队等候 [英国英语]

PHRASAL VERB If people line up or if you line them up, they move so that they are standing in a line. 将…排成队; 排队

The senior leaders lined up behind him in orderly rows.高级领导人有序地排列在他身后

V-T If you fleece someone, you get a lot of money from them by tricking them or charging them too much. 诈骗 [非正式]

She claims he fleeced her out of thousands of dollars.她声称他诈骗了她几千美元。

N-COUNT A scalper['skælpɚ] is someone who sells tickets outside a sports stadium or theatre, usually for more than their original value. 倒票者 [美国英语]

V-T/V-I If a group of animals or people stampede[stæm'pid] or if something stampedes them, they run in a wild, uncontrolled way. 使狂奔; 狂奔

The crowd stampeded and many were crushed or trampled underfoot.

人群狂奔起来，很多人被撞倒或踩踏。

But technology has started to ease this experience. Mobile and digital tickets now account for 70 percent of sales, greatly reducing the lines at train stations. Digital ID scanners have replaced manual checks, expediting the boarding process, and artificial intelligence is deployed across the network to optimize travel routes. New solutions have been invented. China's largest taxi-hailing platform, called Didi Chuxing, launched a new service called Hitch, which matches car owners who are driving home with passengers looking for long-distance routes. In just its third year, Hitch served 30 million trips in this past holiday season, the longest of which was further than 1,500 miles.That's about the distance from Miami to Boston. This enormous need of migrant workers has powered fast upgrade and innovation across the country's transport systems.

taxi-hailing service 出租车叫车服务

taxi-hailing mobile apps 打车手机应用

V-T/V-I If you hitch, hitch a lift, or hitch a ride, you hitchhike. 搭便车 [非正式]

There was no garage in sight, so I hitched a lift into town.附近没有汽车修理厂，于是我搭便车进了城。

Now, the Chinese internet has developed in both familiar and unfamiliar ways. Just like in Silicon Valley, some of the seismic shifts in technology and consumer behavior have been driven by academic research, have been driven by enterprise desires, with the whims of privilege and youth sprinkled in every once in a while.

ADJ Seismic means caused by or relating to an earthquake. 地震的; 地震引起的[ADJ n]

ADJ A seismic shift or change is a very sudden or dramatic change. 突然的 [usu ADJ n

N-VAR A whim is a wish to do or have something that seems to have no serious reason or purpose behind it, and often occurs suddenly. 突发的念头

We decided, more or less on a whim, to sail to Morocco.我们多少有些心血来潮地决定乘船去摩洛哥。

every once in a while有时 

V-T The desire or feeling that drives a person to do something, especially something extreme, is the desire or feeling that causes them to do it. 驱使

More than once, depression drove him to attempt suicide.

不止一次，抑郁驱使他试图自杀。

I am a product of the American tech industry, both as a consumer and a corporate leader. So I am well acquainted with this type of fuel. But about a year and a half ago, I moved from my home in New York City to Hong Kong to become the CEO of the South China Morning Post. And from this new vantage point, I've observed something that is far less familiar to me, propelling so much of China's innovation and many of its entrepreneurs. It is an overwhelming need economy that is serving an underprivileged populous, which has been separated for 30 years from China's economic boom. The stark gaps that exist between the rich and the poor, between urban and rural or the academic and the unschooled -- these gaps, they form a soil that's ready for some incredible empowerment. So when capital and investment become focused on the needs of people who are hanging to the bottom rungs of an economic ladder, that's when we start to see the internet truly become a job creator, an education enabler and in many other ways, a path forward.

ADJ Underprivileged people have less money and fewer possessions and opportunities than other people in their society. 贫穷的; 缺少机遇的 [usu ADJ n]

ADJ A populous country or area has a lot of people living in it. 人口众多的 [正式][usu ADJ n]

Indonesia, with 216 million people, is the fourth most populous country in the world.

印度尼西亚，2.16亿人口，是人口占世界第4位的国家。

...helping underprivileged children to learn to read....帮助穷困的孩子学习阅读。

V-T To propel something in a particular direction means to cause it to move in that direction. 推进

economic boom 经济繁荣 ; 经济蓬勃 ; 经济繁华 ; 经济腾飞

ADJ If two things are in stark contrast to one another, they are very different from each other in a way that is very obvious. (对比) 鲜明的

...secret cooperation between London and Washington that was in stark contrast to official policy.

…伦敦和华盛顿之间的与官方政策明显相悖的秘密合作。

ADJ An unschooled person has had no formal education. 未受过正式教育的 [文学性]

...unskilled work done by unschooled people.

...未受过正式教育的人做出的不精巧的活计。

N-UNCOUNT The empowerment of a person or group of people is the process of giving them power and status in a particular situation. 权利赋予

This government believes very strongly in the empowerment of women.

这届政府坚信赋权于妇女。

N-COUNT The rungs on a ladder are the wooden or metal bars that form the steps. 梯级

I swung myself onto the ladder and felt for the next rung.

我悠到那个梯子上，然后摸索下一级阶梯。

推进计划(path forward)”

vantage /ˈvɑːntɪdʒ/

• 1. 

  N a state, position, or opportunity affording superiority or advantage 优势

Of course, China is not the only place where this alternative fuel exists, nor the only place where it is possible. But because of the country's sheer scale and status as a rising superpower, the needs of its population have created an opportunity for truly compelling impact. When explaining the rapid growth of the Chinese tech industry, many observers will cite two reasons. The first is the 1.4 billion people that call China home.The second is the government's active participation -- or pervasive intervention, depending on how you view it. Now, the central authorities have spent heavily on network infrastructure over the years, creating an attractive environment for investment.At the same time, they've insisted on standards and regulation, which has led to fast consensus and therefore, fast adoption. The world's largest pool of tech talent exists because of the abundance of educational incentives. And local, domestic companies, in the past, have been protected from international competition by market controls.

. 

N-COUNT A superpower is a very powerful and influential country, usually one that is rich and has nuclear weapons. 超级大国

ADJ You can use sheer to emphasize that a state or situation is complete and does not involve or is not mixed with anything else. 纯粹的 [ADJ n] [强调]

ADJ Something, especially something bad, that is pervasive is present or felt throughout a place or thing. (尤指不好的事物) 无处不在的 [正式]

...the pervasive influence of the army in national life.

…军队在国民生活中无处不在的影响。

Of course, you cannot observe the Chinese internet without finding widespread censorship and very serious concerns about dystopian monitoring. As an example:China is in the process of rolling out a social credit rating that will cover its entire population, rewarding and restricting citizens, based on highly qualitative characteristics like honesty and integrity. At the same time, China is deploying facial recognition across many of its 170 million closed-circuit cameras. Artificial intelligence is being used to predict crime and terrorism in Xinjiang province, where the Muslim minority is already under constant surveillance.

dystopian [dis'təupiən] adj.反面假想国的，反面乌托邦的，敌托邦的；极糟的(与utopian相对)

Yet, the internet has continued to grow, and it is so big -- much bigger than I think most of us realize. By the end of 2017, the Chinese internet population had reached 772 million users. That's larger than the populations of the United States, Russia, of Germany, of the United Kingdom, of France and Canada combined. Ninety-eight percent of them are active on mobile. Ninety-two percent of them use messaging apps.There are now 650 million digital news consumers, 580 million digital video consumers,and the country's largest e-commerce platform, Taobao, now boasts 580 million monthly active users. It's about 80 percent larger than Amazon. On-demand travel, between bikes and cars, now accounts for 10 billion trips a year in China. That's two-thirds of all trips taken around the world. So it's a very mixed bag.

V-T/V-I If someone boasts about something that they have done or that they own, they talk about it very proudly, in a way that other people may find irritating or offensive. 吹嘘 [表不满]

Witnesses said Furci boasted that he took part in killing them.证人们说富尔西曾吹嘘说他参与了杀人。

·灵活性（on-demand)

On-demand » 按需

On-demand TV 点播电视 ; 在需求电视

The internet exists in a restricted, arguably manipulated form within China, yet it is massive and has vastly improved the lives of its citizens. So even in its imperfection, the growth of the Chinese internet should not be dismissed, and it's worthy of our closer examination.

V-T If you dismiss something, you decide or say that it is not important enough for you to think about or consider. 不予理会

Let me tell you two other stories today. Luo Zhaoliu is a 34-year-old engineer from Jiangxi province. Now, his home region used to be extremely important to the Communist party because this wasthe birthplace of the Red Army. But over the decades, because of its separation from the economic and manufacturing centers of the country, it has slid into irrelevance. Luo, like so many in his generation, left home at a young age to look for work in a major city. He ended up in Shenzhen, which is one of China's tech hubs. As the young migrate, these rural villages are left with only elderly,who are really struggling to elevate themselves above abject poverty.

V-T If you elevate something to a higher status, you consider it to be better or more important than it really is. 抬高 (地位)

Don't elevate your superiors to superstar status.不要把你的上级抬高到超级明星的地位。

ADJ You use abject to emphasize that a situation or quality is extremely bad. 糟糕透顶的 [强调]

Both of them died in abject['æbdʒɛkt] poverty.他们两个人都死于穷困潦倒。

After nine years, Luo decided to return to Jiangxi in 2017, because he believed that the booming e-commerce marketplace in China could help himrevive his village. Like many rural communities, Luo's home specialized in a very specific provincial craft -- making fermented bean curd, in this case. So he started a small factory and started selling his locally made goods online. There have been many years of consumption growth across China's major cities. But recently, technology has been driving an explosion in craft goods sales among China's middle and upper classes. WeChat and other e-commerce platforms allow rural producers to market and sell their goods far beyond their original distribution areas.

ADJ Provincial means connected with the parts of a country away from the capital city. 省的 [ADJ n]

V-T/V-I If a food, drink, or other natural substance ferments, or if it is fermented, a chemical change takes place in it so that alcohol is produced. This process forms part of the production of alcoholic drinks such as wine and beer. 使发酵; 发酵

The dried grapes are allowed to ferment until there is no sugar left and the wine is dry.干葡萄要经过发酵，直到没有糖分存留，葡萄酒才不会有甜味。

Research companies actually track this impact by counting what is called "Taobao villages." This is any rural village where at least 10 percent of its households are selling goods online and making a certain amount of revenue. And the growth has been significant in the last few years. There were just 20 Taobao villages in 2013, 212 in 2014,780 in 2015, 1,300 in 2016 and over 2,100 at the end of 2017. They now account for nearly half a million active online stores, 19 billion dollars in annual sales and 1.3 million new jobs created. In Luo's first year back home, he was able to employ 15 villagers. And he sold about 60,000 units of fermented bean curd. He expects to hire 30 more people in the next year, as his demand rapidly rises.

N-COUNT You refer to the people who live in a village, especially the people who have lived there for most or all of their lives, as the villagers. 村民 [usu pl]

Soon the villagers couldn't afford to buy food for themselves.很快村民们就买不起吃的东西了。

There are 60 million left-behind children scattered across China's rural landscape. And they grow up with at least one parent far away from home, as a migrant worker.Alongside all the general hardships of rural life, they often have to travel vast and dangerous distances just to get to school. They account for 30 percent of the country's primary and high school students. Ten-year-old Chang Wenxuan is one of these students. He walks an hour each way every single day to school, across these deep ravines, in an isolated landscape. But when he arrives at the small farming village in Gansu province, he will find just two other students in this entire school. Now, Chang's school is one of 1,000 in Gansu alone that has less than five registered students. So with limited student interaction, with underqualified teachers and schoolhouses that are barely furnished and not insulated, rural students have long been disadvantaged, with almost no path to higher education.

N-COUNT A ravine is a very deep, narrow valley with steep sides. 沟壑; 深谷

The bus overturned and fell into a ravine.这辆公共汽车翻了车，掉进了一处深谷。

V-T If a person or group is insulated from the rest of society or from outside influences, they are protected from them. 使隔离

But Chang's future has been dramatically shifted with the installation of a “Sunshine Classroom.” He's now part of a digital classroom of 100 students across 28 different schools, taught by qualified and certified teachers live-streaming from hundreds of miles away. He has access to new subjects like music and art, to new friends and to experiences that extend far beyond his home. Recently, Chang even got to visit the Frederiksborg Castle museum in Denmark -- virtually, of course.

视频直播(Live Streaming)

现场直播(live streaming)”

Now, online education has existed for many years outside of China. But it has never reached truly transformative scale, likely because traditional education systems in other tech centers of the world are far more advanced and far more stable. But China's extreme terrain and size have created an enormous and immediate need for innovation.There's a tech start-up in Shenzhen that grew to 300,000 students in just one year. And by our best estimation at the Post, there are now 55 million rural students across China that are addressable and accessible by live-streaming classes. This market of need is larger than the entire US student population between kindergarten and grade 12.

transformative 有改革能力的 

addressable /əˈdrɛsəbəl/ ADJ possessing or capable of being reached by an address 有址可寻的 [计算机]

So I'm extremely encouraged to find out that private investment in ed-tech in China now exceeds one billion dollars a year, with another 30 billion dollars in public funding that is committed between now and 2020. As the Chinese internet continues to grow, even in its imperfection and restrictions and controls, the lives of its once-forgotten populations have been irrevocably elevated. There is a focus on populations of need, not of want,that has driven a lot of the curiosity, the creativity and the development that we see. And there's still more to come.

IRREVOCABLY » (副) 不能取消地; 不能撤回地

In America, internet population, or penetration, has now reached 88 percent. In China, the internet has still only reached 56 percent of the populous. That means there are over 600 million people who are still offline and disconnected. That's nearly twice the US population. An enormous opportunity.

Wherever this alternative fuel exists, be it in China or Africa, Southeast Asia or the American heartland, we should endeavor to follow it with capital and with effort, driving both economic and societal impact all over the world. Just imagine for a minute what more could be possible if the global needs of the underserved become the primary focus of our inventions.

V-T If you endeavour to do something, you try very hard to do it. 努力 [正式]

They are endeavouring to protect trade union rights.他们正在努力保护工会权利。

ADJ Societal means relating to society or to the way society is organized. 社会的; 社会组织方式的 [正式] [ADJ n]

...the societal changes that have taken place over the last two decades.

...过去二十年中发生的社会演变。

underserved adj. 服务不周到的；服务水平低下的

Thank you.

(Applause)