When she was younger, English professor Yang Jia dreamed of being like characters in the books she read.

年少時，英語教授楊佳曾夢想能夠像書中人物那般生活。

She imagined herself as the strong-willed and independent Jane Eyre, who struggles to be her own individual, or as the rich and beautiful Tonia Tumanova from the Russian novel How the Steel was Tempered.

她想象自己是意志堅強(qiáng)且獨立的簡?愛，頑強(qiáng)抗?fàn)?，忠于自我；或是俄國小說《鋼鐵是怎樣煉成的》中美麗富有的冬妮婭。

Instead, Yang said, she ended up more like the blind characters in those same books - Jane Eyre's love Mr. Rochester, or Pavel Korchagin, the hero who fought against his disability to achieve success.

相反，楊佳說，自己最終卻處于和書中那些失明的主人公一樣的境地——像簡?愛的愛人羅切斯特先生，以及與殘疾斗爭最終取得成功的男主人公保爾?柯察金。

Yet the comparison with these characters is more than merely literary.

然而，同書中這些人物相比，楊佳的經(jīng)歷更具文學(xué)色彩。

At 29, Yang was diagnosed with macular degeneration, which first blurred her vision and then led to her ultimate blindness.

29歲那年，楊佳被確診為視網(wǎng)膜黃斑部退化，起先她的視覺變得模糊不清，最終完全失明。

"Going blind was the watershed of my life. My focus shifted from outrunning others before turning 29 to transcending my own limits after it."

“失明成為我人生的一個分水嶺。29歲之前，我是努力超越別人，29歲之后，我是在超越自我。”

And like those two strong-willed characters, Yang fought the odds to rise from her sudden blindness to became a well-respected social activist.

就像書中那些意志堅強(qiáng)的主人公們一樣，楊佳在困境中頑強(qiáng)斗爭，努力走出突然失明的陰影，最終成為了一名備受尊敬的社會活動家。

Yang, now 47, won admission to Zhengzhou University when she was 15. She was called a genius by her peers and topped her class every year in university.

現(xiàn)年47歲的楊佳，15歲時被鄭州大學(xué)錄取。那時她同齡人們稱為天才，大學(xué)里她每年都再班級里名列前茅。

After three years of teaching at her alma mater following graduation, Yang proceeded to her master's degree at the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

畢業(yè)后，她在鄭州大學(xué)執(zhí)教了三年的時間，之后她來到中國科學(xué)院研究生院繼續(xù)攻讀她的碩士學(xué)位。