People's Daily, June 20, Beijing This morning, East China Normal University held the 2023 graduation ceremony. Qian Xuhong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of East China Normal University, delivered a speech entitled "Ending the best in spite of trials and hardships", encouraging graduates to understand the classics, make good use of what they have, treat views, love life, welcome the future and do good to China.

"I hope that students will take dreams as horses and good as wings, and make progress through trials and hardships and stop at the best. You will be participants, creators and witnesses of everyone's free and comprehensive development, the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the long-term stability of human society, all of which will be realized through your united struggle," Qian Xuhong said. (Li Yihuan, intern Zhang Wanrou)

Qian Xuhong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of East China Normal University, delivered a speech at the 2023 graduation ceremony. Drawings provided by the school

The following is the full text of the speech by President Qian Xuhong entitled "Ending the best through trials and hardships"——

Dear students, teachers and parents

In a twinkling of an eye, it's time to say goodbye. Graduation happens every year, but this year is the most special. Now, on behalf of the school, I reluctantly give you this last lesson: the wind and rain go hand in hand, stop at the best!

During your four years of college and several years of graduate school, you spend most of your time in a changeable and sometimes interrupted learning environment, and in the epidemic period of unstable mood. You have experienced an unimaginable and unforgettable special experience that has not been experienced by previous generations of students. Of course, during this period, we are also lucky to celebrate and share the joy of the 70th anniversary of the National Day, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party and the 70th anniversary of the school anniversary with you.

When fire is used to make gold, youth is the age of quenching. Global conflicts are intensifying, governance is extreme, populism is rampant, and the economy is flagging. It has become an accepted reality before you that there has not been a great change in a century.

In such a changing situation, we need to seek development through service, solve difficulties through development, and create value at the forefront of the times; We need extraordinary strategic patience and tenacity, and firmly believe that the wind and rain will pass, and the colorful clouds will rise after the blue sky is clear!

When I was young, I really liked a song, that is, "Going through trials and hardships" in the 1980s. The main idea of the lyrics is: Today you are going on a long journey again. It is the thick wind and rain, and the long road is uneven. I hope you take care; At the beginning of that year, we met in the wind and rain. I wish you success! Tomorrow I will also go on a journey to accompany you in the wind and rain. The mountains and rivers are long and the roads are uneven. Let's climb together. As the saying goes, the scenery is on a precipitous peak. When the rain passes, the good news turns into a rainbow. Come and go in a hurry, rain and wind!

This is the true portrayal of today's unyielding youth of your generation. I dedicate this song 40 years ago to you!

Students, "The sky is going to be a great task for us, so we must first work hard, strain our muscles and bones, and starve our skin". Facing the future, you are not alone. Your alma mater will always be with you hand in hand. In the face of possible difficulties, I hope you can be strong! Don't be confused by the current prosperity or darkness, because prosperity may be a flash in the pan, and being out of sight may be just the darkness before dawn. Depression will not last long, it often breeds a new round of red sun eruption and ten thousand horses galloping. I hope that students can learn to start from the ordinary and become ordinary people with a sense of mission. After hardships, they still have a sincere heart and a bright smile. After hardships, they still pursue excellence and stop at perfection.

The ancient Chinese mythology tells of many heroes in our minds, such as Nuwa mending the sky, Jingwei reclaiming the sea, Yugong shifting the mountain, Hou Yi shooting the sun. Their mission is to fly into the sky and travel through trials and hardships, injecting unyielding soul and high spirited spirit into future generations.

The alumni of your predecessors who are close at hand also set many examples for you. He made a special trip back to the graduation ceremony. The one who just delivered the alumni address was academician Wang Linfa, a world-famous virus expert. He is deeply concerned about his motherland and his deeds of serving mankind. I think everyone knows something about it, so I will not repeat it.

You have been carrying the "epidemic for three years". In the future, you should be able to "sharpen your sword in ten years". You should learn from hard work, serve the country faithfully, and concentrate on nothing and dare to sit on the bench. Make good use of the power of others, survive and develop, bow to the bottom, wait for the day, if you don't know, you will have made a great achievement.

We all need to understand that there is no way to solve problems at the level of thinking that causes problems. Only when we go beyond the limit to a higher dimension, can we have the wisdom of seeing small mountains. This is the last lesson. At the time of farewell, "Giving gifts is better than giving the way". Here are six parting words I would like to give to you in the light of Lao Tzu's thought, to wish you all good luck in the future:

First, good understanding of classics. Throughout thousands of years, how many powerful people become jokes and disappear in the misty rain; There are almost no traces of the rise and fall of many countries. I am grateful that Laozi left Confucius and us with the admonitions and "five thousand words" in the Records of the Historian, so that the Chinese civilization has survived thousands of years after the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, the world war, and the flames of war; He let us know how to conduct ourselves, abide by morality, avoid sharp mistakes, fight well, turn defeat into victory, and transcend gains and losses. This "five thousand words" has the charm of transcending time and space, civilization, nation, national boundaries, and industry, and has inspired many Nobel Prize winners.

Everyone should have a daily must read classic, such as Tao Te Ching, which enables us to have the same wisdom as Confucius, Sun Tzu, Fan Li and Ge Hong. Laozi's wisdom comes from his historiographer's experience. Taking history as a mirror, it is wise to read history. If each of us can go back to our parents' family history, family history, family education and family instructions in previous generations, understand where I came from, who I am, and where I will go, we will know that almost everything in front of us is a new make-up of human history.

In the face of this extremely uncertain world, we should use kindness, good words and good deeds to protect our strength and avoid danger. Goodness is the synonym of "the way of the world, the virtue of heaven, the way of many help, the way of few help", good is the nickname of "the road". Goodness is not weakness, hypocrisy, nor extreme and paranoid, but appropriate affirmation and negation, and grasp its changes. In a sense, we should cherish uncertainty, because creation originates from uncertainty. Uncertainty indicates that there are many possibilities. Although it is disturbing, it means more opportunities. To seize the opportunity in uncertainty, we need each of us to have a variety of possibilities and preparations that are specialized in one subject and versatile, cross-border intelligence, and super ability.

Second, make good use of what you have. The reason why people are often trapped in a dilemma and unable to get out of it, or become complacent because of success and finally fall into failure, is that they do not understand the law of "the opposite, the movement of the Tao", and cannot correctly treat and grasp the non existence, success and failure, as well as their mutual transformation of the iron law of the Tao. "Nothing" is not nothing, and "Being" is not eternal; We should not ignore the meaning of nothing, but stick to the existence. The world comes from the singularity, and there is no coexistence; Vacuum is not empty, there are quantum fluctuations. Phoenix nirvana, born to death, can be reborn after burning flames. You can listen to thunder in silence only when you know that "the sound is loud and the elephant is invisible".

Tit for tat, conditioned reflex, dancing with the wind, black and white opposition are the traditional habitual thinking of many binary split brains; However, avoiding the actual situation and fighting against the false, advancing in a wrong way, focusing on myself, and shifting the universe, so as to make good use of what is and what is not, can often open up new development time and space for people.

Today, how to get out of the predicament and create a wonderful future? We should learn from nature. The prosperity and diversity of species caused by evolution are mainly not the result of tit for tat competition, but the virtue of rejecting introversion and dislocation development. The inner scroll is a vicious competition in the same niche that loses the significance of progress. Species competition is not omni-directional and blank free. Finding, selecting or opening up a blank and new niche can create a personalized and relaxed environment for oneself, and can thrive and have a future.

Going down the river and going up against the current can imitate nature, thus turning nothing into something and turning something into nothing. The swaying rainbow trout can transform the counter current into the vortex thrust of the tail and the rainbow attraction of the head, so as to realize the upstream; The zigzag wooden boat in the canal, which goes against the wind and the current, changes resistance into power, passivity into initiative, disadvantage into advantage, adversity into prosperity, and other forces into their own by adjusting the angle of the sail and tail rudder, so as to turn bad luck into good luck and disaster into good fortune.

The third is to treat views kindly. Be kind to different viewpoints and different people, because countless viewpoints observe things differently and verify each other, so as to approach the laws and truth of the world. In thesis writing, business judgment and action planning, it is necessary to comprehensively collect, quote and present those different opinions that you like or dislike, and then make judgments or choices that do not violate the main road on the basis of values and mission beliefs. However, we should never choose or reject representative views at will, turn a blind eye to them, so as to deceive ourselves and mislead others. Whether we can be kind to different views reflects the good and evil of human nature, which is not far away from us. The touching deeds of strangers that can be seen every day on the Internet or the Internet uproar taken out of context are the best examples of both positive and negative aspects.

Fourth, love life well. Every life has its own will. It fully respects human nature, regulates human nature, and has positive interaction and harmonious development, which is good. We should learn to fear and avoid unnecessary dangers, understand the meaning of "life education", cherish life, do not lean against dangerous walls, do not enter the dead end, attach importance to essential safety, and strictly abide by responsibility safety.

You will all get married and start a family, so you should understand the meaning of family and "family education". Family is the expansion and continuation of a person's life. There are no abandoned things and people in the world. We should be good at exploring and developing our own uniqueness and irreplaceable, exploring our own wisdom, and being good at facing all challenges. He is good at accepting the imperfections of society, others and himself, because imperfections leave more opportunities for the world to develop. The truly perfect state should be "flowers are not in full bloom, and the moon is not in full circle".

Be kind to those who are good; To those who are not good, we should also treat them properly; So as to realize the virtue. Trust the believer; Believe the untrustworthy as well; In order to achieve moral integrity. The good is the teacher or model of the bad, and the bad is the resource or reference of the good. Do not value teachers or models, do not cherish resources or learn from them, it seems that wisdom is actually stupid. These words are not my inventions, but my examples of Laozi.

The fifth is to welcome the future. As a world-class comprehensive research university with Chinese characteristics and determined to lead education and innovation, our goal is to cultivate outstanding talents in the future. The future is unknowable. According to the trend, we can know that the future is beyond the limit, cross-border, integration and intelligence. Human industry has gone from low to high, spanning four ages from 1.0 to 4.0: the age of steam, electricity, information and intelligence; Agriculture also spans four times from 1.0 to 4.0: manual labor, mechanized planting, agricultural industrialization, and intelligent agriculture. For education and education, if we say that illiterate people are 1.0 people in nature, those who have knowledge and skills are 2.0 people, those who learn and evolve to the level of thinking and spirit are 3.0 people, and those whose soul or thought can affect others or even mankind are 4.0 people. Therefore, the future is not that intelligent machines bring challenges to people's employment, but that exam takers who can only work and learn like machines will be eliminated by history sooner or later. Therefore, we hope that everyone can base on the future, transcend knowledge points, and constantly improve themselves from 2.0 to 3.0 and 4.0.

Sixth, do good to China. In the face of the great changes that have not happened in the world in a century, we are more and more aware that the stability, development, prosperity and prosperity of the country are great benefits for citizens, and the prosperity of China's people will also be the greatest blessing for all mankind. Chinese style modernization, our education and education, is to follow and achieve "everyone's free and comprehensive development".

Human beings are advanced animals with the ability of language and writing. Some people are more materialistic, and some people are more "divine". Those between the two can be called human beings. If we all take serving the people, achieving ourselves, stopping at the best, and approaching the road as our sacred mission, then China will become the land of God that everyone aspires to.

I hope that students will take dreams as horses and kindness as wings, and make the best of everything. Bless you! Envy you! You will be participants, creators and witnesses of everyone's free and comprehensive development, the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the long-term stability of human society, all of which will be realized through your united struggle!

Thank you!

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