What Is Real Beauty?

Yang Lingyuan

本篇是96年湖南省第二届非英语专业大学生英语演讲比赛团体二等奖获奖者之一的演讲辞。其中引用正、反两方面的事例来论述“真正的美不在外表，而在内心”这一观点的方法值得学习与借鉴。

   It is human nature that all of us should be fond of beauty. Everybody was born with a heart for beauty.
   Today in China,with the rising of our living standard, people's requirement of beauty has been heightened accordingly. Some people spare no money or energy on beautiful clothes, fashionable hair styles,the decoration of their houses and even the improvement of their looks. But it seems to me,all
these are more or less confined to the beauty in appearance,or rather,the outward beauty.
   In my opinion,we shouldn't only pay attention to beautiful appearance and neglect the beautification of the mind and what we are after should be the perfect unity¹ of the outward beauty and the inner beauty. As we all know,so far as objects and animals are concerned,there is only beautiful appearance to be mentioned, but to us humanbeings, although the outward beauty really matters, the inner beauty is much more important. This was confirmed by a famous Russian writer in words much like this: "A person is
not lovely for being beautiful but beautiful for being lovely. "
   Here, I'd like to quote two typical instances and I'm sure, my dear friends,from them you'll find out what real beauty is.
   Recently I learned from the radio an unpleasant incident about a well known singer. She is very charming with a sweet beautiful voice and very famous for singing the song."Devotion of Love". Not long ago,she was invited to Zhejiang Province to give performance. The moment she was to appear on the stage,she suddenly asked for more reward. Worse still,after her request was satisfied, she didn't begin to sing at once. Instead,she took her time to count all the money piece by piece. Thus she kept the audience waiting for half an hour. So when she at last showed up and started to sing "Devotion of Love",a man rose up from his seat and shouted at her,"You don't have any devotion of love. You are not qualified² to sing this song ! "Hearing this, the singer stopped singing and began to shout abuses with her finger pointed³ at the man. At this time the whole audience burst into an uproar⁴.
    How disappointed her keen listeners were when they learned this! It is the singer herself who spoiled her beautiful image in the eyes of others.
   Now, I'm coming to another true story. It's about a poor, ordinary looking old woman. She was a widow without any children, living barely from hand to mouth by picking odds⁵ and ends from rubbish heaps. However,she took in more than ten homeless orphans⁶ successively and managed to bring them up. Every day she labored⁷ from morning till night. In order to earn as much money as possible to raise the children and to keep them in school,she even went to a hospital regularly to sell her blood. She got so weak for the loss of blood that she sometimes fell in a faint on her way home.
    When asked why she chose to burden herself with so many children,she smiled and simply answered,"Oh,I love children and I like to have their company. "
   Though the old woman was poor materially, she was full of affection and rich in spirit. She was loved dearly by her children. She was also highly appreciated by the local government, and truly respected by people in her community.
Maybe you can't help wondering, "What makes that ordinary woman so extraordinary?" It is nothing else but her inner beauty, her true devotion of love without any thought of rewarding. What a sharp contrast there is between the great woman and the selfish singer]
    So,to answer the question "What is real beauty?", I declare definitely,it is the beauty lying in one's heart of hearts and embodied⁸ in his actions and deeds,that is,the inner heauty!