北京大学副教授王选给侄女王侃的一封信：出国怎么干（图）

| 消息来源：光明日报 |
侃侃、秦岺:

接到侃侃信,知道秦岺马上去美国。这次恐怕要若干年后才能见面了,临别总觉得有些话要说。

这次你们两人出去读学位,当然希望都能得到博士学位,我相信也不难做到这点,免不了会有些拼搏,人的一生能有几次拼搏,这大概也算得上一次了。大学毕业到博士、副教授这段时间是干活最多、出活最多的时间。话又说回来,得不到博士也没有关系,不要为此有任何思想负担以致影响身体和精神,也有一些人在MIT始终得不到学位,到了期限被赶出,但后来做出了杰出的贡献。

有两类人,一类人才华外露,似乎很易出成就;另一类人则依靠坚持不懈的奋斗,长年累月下来最后获得成功。我比较欣赏第二类人。尽管很多科学家是在三十岁出头就有成果的,但也有不少人四十以上才出成果。四年大学、几年研究生读到的东西是很有限的,还得靠以后的努力,为此更不必为得不到学位而发愁。

在向导师学习时,除了学习知识外,更多地要学习解决问题的方法,特别是有名的导师取得成绩的途径。

选择研究方向方面尽可能选国内比较需要、又有广阔发展前景的方向。一定要有发展前景,因为选择的方向也许是毕生研究的内容。四十年代末交大电机是热门, 但一到美国,搞电机的人很多都改成学新兴学科----计算机、半导体、激光。王适[注]就是及早改了行。所以尽可能选新兴学科。研究课题我意见不要选纯理论的和太实际、太偏重当前应用的题目,两个极端的项目不要选,前者会在国内得不到支持,后者意思不大,储备太少,搞新的领域困难。

身体是第一位的,出国后仍要坚持锻炼身体,宁可不得学位,也不要把身体搞坏,不要开夜车,生活要有规律。

要学会交际,搞现代科研,组织管理极为重要,要学会张罗。侃侃这点占有优势,不能成为书呆子,书呆子办不成大事。

要保持东方美德,以个人为中心、金钱至上、一切东西商业化,这些西方缺点不能沾染。西方科学家中也有一些品德高尚的,但也会有一些品质不好的人,要保持警惕。

（以下是王选夫人陈堃銶的附言）要力求掌握真才实学,不图虚名,要真正做到这点不大容易,特别是由于周围环境的压力,我们常在为此努力。

注意身体除了锻炼外,吃也很重要,一定要注意营养。有些人省钱去买什么大件,弄坏了身体,真是因小失大。我想你们是不会的。

不多谈了,祝秦岺一路平安。

小叔叔

小婶婶

1983年6月1日

[注]王适是王选的已故远堂兄,时任美国加州大学伯克利分校电机系教授。

编者注:1983年,以王选、陈堃銶为主要领导和技术骨干的北大科研团队在研制成功汉字激光照排系统原理性样机并通过部级鉴定后,正克服内外压力,加紧研制能够实用的第二代系统。

这年5月,我国印刷技术装备发展规划方案作为专项补充列入国家“六五”计划,王选他们的研究项目被正式纳入国家规划。

同年,王选的工作单位北大汉字信息处理技术研究室扩建为计算机科学技术研究所,副教授王选任副所长。

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图：侃侃

From pencil maker to vaccine researcher

Kan Wang

Kan Wang

by Teddi Barron

Next month, plant scientist Kan Wang will return to her native China for a special reunion. She won't be catching up with distant cousins or reminiscing with school classmates, though. She'll reunite with employees of the pencil factory where she was assigned to work in 1975.

Wang is associate professor of plant molecular biology in the agronomy department and director of the Center for Plant Transformation. A pioneer in biopharmaceuticals, ag biotech's newest arena, she engineered corn to produce a therapeutic protein to protect humans and animals from diarrhea caused by bacterial infections.

How a little girl destined to work an assembly line landed light years away in a major university plant biotech lab is an extraordinary tale of luck and pluck. Initiative and inertia. Resilience and diligence.

Mao's China

Wang grew up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution （1966-76）, a social-political experiment to rid the Communist Party of intellectual and bourgeois influences. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, imprisoned, persecuted or forced into manual labor. Economic activity halted, universities closed, and cultural and historical artifacts were destroyed.

As was common practice at the time, Kan was raised by her grandparents, rather than her parents. Her grandfather selected the name Kan, which means "candid, honest, straightforward." Ironically, his outspokenness the year she was born later sealed the family's fate. He openly criticized Chairman Mao's wife -- while it was still okay to do so -- and was labeled an extreme rightist, anti-revolutionary. When the Cultural Revolution started nine years later, he was punished for his politics. He was demoted from high-level accountant to neighborhood janitor. The entire family was marked, ostracized and banished to the wrong side of the political tracks.

"When I was 9, the Red Guards came into our home to search for guns or whatever they considered inappropriate at the time. It was very scary," Wang said. "Overnight, I became a 'bad' kid from a 'bad' family. For my punishment at school, I had to clean the bathroom. I felt like I was nothing. It was horrible, humiliating."

It also was catalytic.

"That treatment hurt me so much that I always tried to outperform everybody to prove my value," she said.

Like most Chinese institutions, the K-12 educational system all but disappeared during the Cultural Revolution. Students recited Mao's writings and ridiculed intellectuals and other anti-revolutionaries.

"For six years, I went to school and learned nothing," Wang said.

So, she and friends started an underground school. They secretly passed around math, physics and English books.

"It was like a secret book club. We were starved for knowledge and loved homework. We thought it was fun," Wang said. "We taught each other. We even taught ourselves how to build a radio from second-hand parts."

After high school graduation, the government determined where young people were to go, what they would to do with their lives. Some were mandated to settle in remote rural areas; others were ordered to factory work in the cities. It was totally random, with one exception. An only child remained with older parents to provide their old-age care. Such was Wang's fate. She stayed in Shanghai and was sent to work at the pencil factory.

"I was so happy that I could stay in the city and be an assembly line worker. That was the highest status I could ever expect to reach. I was quite content the first two years," she said.

By about 1975, government leaders began to realize that the young employees lacked the knowledge and skills necessary to be good workers. A group at the pencil factory -- the ones Wang will see at the reunion -- were trained systematically. Their days were split between assembly line technical training and high school equivalency classes. After two years, Wang received her permanent assignment.

"I had to work with the big oven and the glue. It was the worst assembly line in the factory. I had migraines every day," she said. "I didn't think I'd ever have the option to do anything else," she said.

End of an era

Then the Cultural Revolution ended.

Universities were re-opened and entrance exams offered. Kan and her friends, including her childhood neighbor and future husband Ling, embraced the opportunity. In preparation, she studied English vocabulary on homemade flash cards while waiting for the glue or the oven on the assembly line.

"We had absolutely no clue whether or not we were up to the task. But we gave the entrance exam a shot. That was a turning point," she said.

"My grandmother has since asked me this question: If I had not been assigned the absolutely worst job at the pencil factory, would I have taken the entrance exam? I probably wouldn't have. The factory was a comfortable place otherwise, and many of my friends who could have taken the exam, didn't," she said.

Wang passed with flying colors and entered a program in biology/biochemistry. She became part of a lost generation of students who suffered from the lack of higher education. There was a 10-year range in the ages of her classmates.

"Our first year was very difficult. We worked extremely hard and didn't socialize. The students who were 10 years older could comprehend things faster. They were older when the Cultural Revolution started and benefited from more years of better schooling," she said.

The next step

After 10 years of a society without college graduates, there were no jobs for the first graduates. Wang applied to graduate school, earning the second highest score of students in biology from her university.

"For the first time, I was not measured by my family's background, but rather by my own merit," she said.

By 1982 when she applied to graduate school Ph.D. programs, Western countries had started to open their doors to China. The Chinese government sent top students from every discipline to graduate school in the West.

Although she applied for human genetics, she was sent to the University of Ghent in Belgium to a plant genetics program. Her professor insisted she go because "it was the best lab of its kind."

At the same time, her childhood sweetheart Ling received a graduate scholarship from the University of Notre Dame. A few weeks before he left for the United States, they married. The young couple lived apart for the next eight years.

"We knew we'd be apart immediately, but marriage was the commitment we wanted so we wouldn't grow apart," she said. Married for 22 years, they have two children, Evelyn, 13, and Alex, 10.

Sponge for knowledge

At the University of Ghent, Wang flourished in the molecular biology lab of Marc Van Montague, who pioneered plant genetic engineering.

For one of the first times in her life, she was asked to choose what she wanted to do.

"It was very scary to have the responsibility of deciding my research project," she said. "I told Marc that I had a question about how the DNA from bacteria got delivered to the plant, hoping that he would tell me. Instead, he said, 'That's your project, find the answer.'"

With no preparation or skills for molecular biology research when she arrived in Belgium, Kan was proactive and worked hard to catch up.

"I really thrived under the freedom of Marc's lab. I was like a sponge, absorbing knowledge like crazy. Of course, I was standing on the shoulders of giants. But I worked hard, was observant and when opportunity came, I grabbed it," she said.

Her diligence paid off in a big way. In her second year, Wang published a paper in a leading life science journal, Cell. The following year, she published in one of the most prestigious journals, Science; then co-authored a paper in another top journal, Nature.

Wang continued in Van Montague's lab as a post doctoral fellow. After a brief return to China, she eventually landed a research position in 1989 with ICI Seeds （now Syngenta） in Slater. She continued to work in crop genetic engineering, still in its infancy. After six years, she joined the faculty at Iowa State.

With support from a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, ISU administrators and talented graduate students, she has successfully pursued the development of a vaccine in corn. This year's field trial is well under way. The corn harvested will be used in animal feeding studies and for analysis of efficient means to extract and purify the therapeutic protein.

And while the corn is growing to maturity, Wang has an appointment to keep with old friends at the pencil factory.