{据美国侨报编译报道，《俄勒冈人》(The Oregonian)是美国俄勒冈州当地最权威并且拥有庞大读者群的媒体之一。近日，一名叫做史蒂夫.杜因(Steve Duin)的记者发表题为《克拉克马斯高中女生李丹(音译)可能教会波特兰市长萨姆.亚当斯的事》的报道。文章对当下波特兰市长无法兑现教育奖学金允诺的事件作出评论，而评论中引述出一名华人高中生李丹的例子，为读者揭开一个华人学生在美国自强不息、善良为人的奋斗故事。}
TO: William Fitzsimmons
Dean of Admissions
Harvard College
86 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Dean Fitzsimmons:
Among the thousands of applications that will arrive at Harvard before year's end, you will find one from Dan Li, a senior at Clackamas High School.
Dan has the raw numbers you might expect from a student who aspires to attend the best colleges in the land: an 800 on her Math SAT and 800s on her SAT subject tests in Chemistry, Chinese and Math II. In a two-week span of her junior year at Clackamas, she took seven advanced-placement tests, scoring 5s in Chinese and Chemistry.
In the calculus of your admissions' process, I know there is prestige in those numbers. There may be enough to guarantee her that celebrated free ride through Cambridge.
But those are not the numbers that have shaped Dan's life. They are not the numbers that define her.
And they are not among the reasons this young woman has changed the way so many in Oregon think about perseverance, opportunity and gratitude.
By the time she was 15, Dan -- and her mother, Zhaoyan Yu -- had survived two troubling relationships. When Dan was a young girl in China, her father was an abusive alcoholic. "There were countless nights when after he got drunk, he would beat up my mother like crazy," Dan writes in a college essay.
"I would kneel on the floor, beg him to stop, and pray some neighbors would hear the noise and knock on the door."
Dan was eight when her mother finally secured a divorce. In 2007, Zhaoyan Yu married again, this time to J.K. Smith, 64, who courted her online and during trips to China. Dan and her mother came to Grants Pass that summer believing America to be "a land that is full of dreams and justice."
The romance lasted 40 days.
When Yu and her daughter were not properly subservient to the man of the house, push came to shove. When Dan's mother responded by throwing a plastic water bottle at her hu*****and, he called police, terrifying the women with the threat that they would be hauled off to jail.
After listening to Smith describe all this, the police dispatcher asked him what his wife and stepdaughter were doing now. "They're hugging each other," he said.
Some things never change.
After Oregon State troopers arrived that August morning and sorted things out, Smith was arrested for menacing and domestic violence, and Dan and her mother were entrusted to the local Women's Crisis Support Team. Over the next several months, they lived in seven different women's shelters between Grant's Pass and St. Helens before Dan Li finally arrived in Clackamas.
Somewhere along the line, Dean Fitzsimmons, you might have expected Dan to spiral off into despair or resentment.
She did nothing of the kind. Dan was, instead, acutely aware of the small, unexpected bursts of kindness from teachers, shelter volunteers and hospital nurses.
"This experience helped me learn English," Dan says. "I had to step up. Go out with my mother to find housing and a job. If I had stayed in my stepfather's house, I wouldn't have been able to do these things.
"I consider myself really lucky. If this had happened in China, this would have ended badly."
Harley Potampa, a retired math teacher and the Key Club advisor, first noticed Dan in December 2007. No matter how early he arrived at the high school, Dan was always working at one of the school computers or waiting in the rain for the custodians to unlock the doors.
Potampa introduced himself. Over the next two years, he watched, with increasing awe, as Dan raised money for Mercy Corps to help earthquake victims in China and Haiti; single-handedly brought English language learners into the fabric of the Clackamas community; enrolled in college courses at Reed College; and volunteered at Kaiser Sunnyside.
She showed up for Kaiser for the first time on the morning she turned 16. Her first birthday in the United States. The first morning she was eligible to volunteer.
"I'm seen her develop into one of the two or three most inspirational high-school students I've ever met," Potampa says.
"I'm amazed at her resilience. She's stronger than any human being I've ever met. Watching her take advantages of opportunities we take for granted, she's taught me a lot about what this country has to offer."
Everyone echoes those sentiments, even as the tumult in this girl's life continues. A serious auto accident last February forced Zhaoyan Yu to quit her job as a nurse. Money is so tight that Dan lives with her mother in a low-income apartment off Southeast 82nd Drive in which the SAT study guides outweigh their furniture.
And she lives without a quiver of self-pity or doubt. Lives with a blind eye to her problems and an open heart for yours. Lives only to respond to the kindness she has found in this angry, divided country of ours.
"All I can say," notes Ford Morishita, who taught Dan Advanced Placement Biology, "is this student has inspired me to be a better teacher and human being."
She wants to work for Mercy Corps. She wants to go to medical school. She wants to study Chinese medicine in Beijing and serve in the poorest village on the planet.
But first, Dean Fitzsimmons, she would like to attend Harvard.
She'll do fine if she never takes a run at orgo or the Yard. She's applying to a dozen other schools, including Stanford, Washington, Duke, UCLA and Cal Tech.
But you have first shot. If you realize how fortunate you are, you better call and you best hurry.
Dan Li is just getting started. And she is no longer waiting for that knock at the door.
Sincerely,
Steve Duin
(李丹最近已收到了包括麻省理工、哈佛、杜克等美国尖端学府在内的大学录取通知书。)
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