A Letter to Class 2019 from President Xu

Dear Students,

This has been an exciting time as each day brings new tidings of your good news. Many of you, as I have heard, have been admitted into PhD and Master programmes by world-renowned universities, others by celebrated enterprises. In the meantime, I am well aware that our Second Graduating Class is about to leave their Alma Mater. Spring goes by swiftly, as all life’s good times do. I believe you have lived each passing day to the fullest. Some of the days can be tremendously hard, so hard as every single day wears on perpetually as the length of a year, yet some whirl away as though years’ length equates to but the transience of a day. Four springs seem to have gone by within a blink of the eye. Such alternation between transience and perpetuity articulates the meaning of life, its hardships and joys.

I wish to share with you this story of mine. My first job brought me to dwell in a local residence in Pittsburgh, where I took the room on the lower storey while an old landlady lived upstairs. Upon first entrance, my room surprised me with a nice bouquet of faint rosy flowers on the table. I made haste to thank my landlady for her hospitality and the pains she had taken. She apologised, instead, explaining that the bouquet was prepared by the previous occupant of my room. The previous occupant, who to the landlady’s impression was a visiting scholar from Europe, leaves behind her a fresh bouquet to the next new comer each time she leaves a place. This said, I was touched to the heart. This unknown scholar has ever since been constantly on my mind, urging me to ask myself, what can I leave behind? Now as your leave-taking presses near, I would like to ask you this same question, what will you leave behind?

Among the most wonderful things you can leave to your Alma Mater, I think, will be one or two ideas for the university from your unique perspective. Our university, as you can see, is far from perfect. Step by step, you have witnessed its development from a cluster of renovated industrial buildings into what we have now. In the past five years, we have spared no effort in advancing our faculty level, curriculum design, and campus facilities, despite which, there still remains a lot to be done. Your suggestions shall accelerate our improvement and pave a smoother way for your upcoming schoolmates. Each of your letters, I assure, will have my close attention, and shall be duly dispatched to each concerned unit of our university.

I thank you again, for your toleration, your understanding, and your affection for your Alma Mater, and I wish you all a bright prospect.

Yangsheng Xu

President of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Please send your feedback to the President's Office: president@cuhk.edu.cn