Dear President Yang Fujia, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, and my lovely UNNC fresh graduates of 2018, I am the graduate of class 2008, the first batch of student in UNNC.
Today is a day of joy and celebration, of happy endings and new beginnings, of families and friends, of achievements and hopes. Today, I’m honored to be with you here for your commencement.
From now on, UNNC will forever be your Spiritual Homeland, the place of your gorgeous youth, and the place that you sometimes complained about when you were here, but will not allow people to say a negative word towards when you walk off this campus.
Looking at our beautiful campus today, it actually has stayed much alike as it was 10 years ago, except that in the first year of 2005, when we first moved to this campus, it was in the middle of nowhere. Trees were much shorter than they are today, numbers of buildings are much fewer, Starbucks was 30 miles away, about an hour drive, and there’s only 245 of us as the first batch students.
And now we have more than 8000 students, almost 33 times bigger than the first year, and the enrollment score of joining UNNC is at least 40-50 more than a tier 1 university score line，meaning that UNNC has publically recognized as a place to breeding future talents. We should all be proud of it.
Today as you graduate and begin anew, I am honored to be here to share with you some of my thoughts and my stories of personal development.
First of all, one of the most important things I've learned from UNNC, is that always have a strong determination. I always wish this for myself, and I wish this for you.
In 2009, with the background of a serious financial crisis, I got my master’s degree and was determined to find a job in London, and I succeeded, I am the first of the first batch of UNNCers to get a job offer in London.
Looking back to that period of time, that year UK was in the shadow of financial crisis, lots of companies tend to reduce their number of staff rather than employing more. As a foreign graduate, with families and resources mainly in other side of the earth, I realized that all I have is my strong determination. So I decided to be resolute and cut off any means of retreat.
After my master’s graduation, I refused the financial support from my family, only live with my own earnings, I did not looking at any chances that were based outside UK, by doing that, I succeeded and happily worked in London for about 2 years.
From this experience, I found that if you have a strong determination to do something, you would be supervised by yourself of what you can do.
I have always kept my determination. In July when I meet our USA branch’s manager, he said that: Bing, I think you are a warrior. And I am glad he said so.
So my suggestion is, don’t hesitate to challenge yourself, be brave and try to do the things that you think are difficult. Once you’ve started, you may find out that it is not so difficult as you have imagined. And whether or not you achieved your goal, the experience of doing that will be a treasure of your life.
Secondly, try your best to do things down to earth.
As you step into the outside society, you will meet many different people. You will meet people like me, your schoolmates that comes from a similar background and will look at you with a friendly and merciful eye, and you will also meet people from very different backgrounds, competing with you in many ways.
Whoever you meet or compete with, remember that you are an outstanding graduate of UNNC, you have made great efforts to finish the four years courses with a language that is not you mother tongue.
But also you shall have to remind yourself that, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Third, embrace the changes that happens in your life.
In the year 2011, I realized that the economy in China was blooming much faster than other countries, and there’s huge opportunities behind the trends, so I gave up things that I built in London, took a job offer in Shanghai, and came back to China. Today I can say that this is one of the best decisions I have ever made.
When I came back to Shanghai, I was immediately experienced the culture shake in many ways. One of the most important fact is, I realize that things shown on teleplays are actually happening around. In Shanghai and Beijing there are people coming from rural parts of China that modern transportation cannot reach, lives with a life style that you can’t imagine. They work 24/7 as they know crystal clear，that if they step back, they may fall off cliff. While think of myself, if I step back there’s backup from families and friends. This feeling was very different.
Well from this experience, I realized that our supports shall not weaken our determinations.
We shall do things down to earth, try to understand and appreciate people from different backgrounds, even our competitors, in the meantime, learn from them and make ourselves stronger.
After coming back to Shanghai, my life had not stop changing. Another two years later in 2014, I decided to come back to Ningbo, and changed my career from finance industry, to manufacturing. By doing that, I had to start from scratch to learn about manufacturing and engineering.
But guess what, I’m doing quite well so far. Now I am a female entrepreneur with two kids, running a company with a thousand employees. And with the blooming of my business, I received many social awards, including entering to the political system from business, and became the youngest representative to the people’s congress in Ningbo.
And what truly makes me proud is that I am providing many jobs to the local community, and I am supporting hundreds of families.
So another thought I want to share with you is that, don’t be afraid of changes, embrace them and they can help build a better version of you as well.
Finally I’d like to applaud your achievement again. And I look forward to seeing all of you making a positive difference in the world.
To all of our graduates in 2018, congratulations and best wishes.
Thank you all very much!