我的参赛译文:
  
                                     Three Phases of Reading

 

      When it comes to reading, I believe, one has to experience three phases in most cases: firstly joy, then pain, and thirdly bliss. To the extent of the first phase, one would, in a greater part, read for self-entertainment. He would be joyous in reading the stories about the Ugly Duckling's growth into a swan, the bird Jingwei's search for twigs to fill the sea in the form of sea-gull in Chinese myth, the love between Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, the origin of human culture, and the history of biological science so as to satisfy his soul hankering for knowledge. To the second phase, one reads while putting what he has learned into practice in pursuit of moral perfection and truth. He may be confused and bemused with the affairs of the world delineated in the books when he is engaged in the understanding of something regular from the sediments of the abundant civilization, and the innovation and progress in the academic sphere and his career, and thus feel a pain and regret for his deficiency in learning only when it comes to applying what he has learned. In the third phase, the "pain"  mentioned above then turned into "bliss". Here one, well versed in the learning of China and western countries and good at comprehending by analogy, can step into a blissful state of "sublimation" by freely making good use of books.

 

      There are, however, few scholars who can truly enter the state of  "sublimation" nowadays, which entails my frequent self-reflection. In all fairness, I, at most, have reached no where than the middle of the way from the first phase to the second. This means I am now pacing up and down between "self-entertainment" and "exploration". Even though I relax myself through reading in spare time, I, drifting along from place to place all the year round and bogged down in business matters, do so most for self-entertainment. Nevertheless, I have to come into touch with books every day, reading something profound enough to my ignorance, learning the affluent affairs of the world and pursuing some academic exploration, after all, I am obsessed with research and study tasks. It's therefore, natural for me to heave a great sigh over the shortness of the journey of life and the vastness of the ocean of books. For some books, I have no alternative but to thumb them through in the pressure of the limited time-- sometimes academic truth can be found by "thumbing through". For some others, I have to read them for several times-- sometimes I still fail to grasp the essence even after several times, and thus my soul is fast beset with these books. There are also some books, which are beyond of my specialized field, but which I have to brazen it out and read. Certainly, we should not do some reading for its own cause since we must apply what we have read, which requires a "comprehensive approach" to the knowledge and a creative transformation worthy of our every effort.

 

      Most of the people of our generation who are at the age of fifty or so, fall far behind the older generation in terms of the old Chinese learning and are to be caught up very soon by the later generation on the aspect of the new learning. Therefore, I often indicate it to my friends sharing the same interest that we are acting as a "transitional" role. And this is the reason why there is no other choice than making the best use of our time to read assiduously in the hope that we may refresh our soul and seek "bliss" in "pain".