译文:
Three Questions, Three Eye-openers
The school bell rang, and the class teacher came in without carrying any book. He stood on the raised platform for quite a while without uttering a word. The students were amazed while laughing and looking at him. The teacher glanced over the students and said, “We shall discuss three questions in this lesson,” and asked, “What is the tallest mountain in the world?” They burst into laughter and replied, “Everest!” The teacher followed with another question: “The second tallest mountain?” This time the students stared at each other blankly in silence. The teacher turned around and wrote a sentence on the blackboard: Second place is no different to being unknown.
The teacher said after a pause, “All right, We’ll now discuss the second question. Someone was about to boil a kettle of water, but after starting the fire he noticed that the firewood might not be sufficient. What should he do?” The students came up with a range of opinions such as quickly going to find firewood, to borrow, or to buy. Without agreeing or disagreeing, the teacher said, “Why not pour away some of the water from the kettle?” After hearing that, the students all agreed with admiration.
And then, the teacher mentioned the third question: “There was a man in ancient China who wanted to learn the survival skill. After comparing various options, he decided to learn the art of dragon slaughtering. Therefore, he found himself a famous master, training hard day and night, and eventually completed his training somehow. Can you all tell me what would he be?” The students enthusiastically said he would definitely be a hero, a star, and admired by everyone. Some even quoted a lot of well-documented evidence. Listening and shaking his head, the teacher said, “This man would surely be poor and miserable for his whole life, because there is no such thing as dragon in this world.”
From the teacher’s enlightening teaching, everyone finally understood that the teacher actually intended to use that period to teach us how to live, work and study. That is, in life one should strive to be outstanding and bravely fight for the best, only then can you be spotted and remembered; at work, one should dare to innovate by means of flexible methods, and never stick to the conventions; Studying should be carried out so that the acquired knowledge can be useful and transformed into benefits. “Making cars behind closed doors” is just acting blindly by divorcing oneself from reality, there is no way out.