Author: Li Liu

Dear students, teachers, and all parents:

Good morning! In the charming September of autumn, we are gathered here to welcome 3271 students newly joined. Besides, 2022 is the year marking the 60th anniversary of BLCU’s establishment. First of all, I would like to stand for the whole school to extend warm congratulations to all of your excellent grades. Welcome to Little United Nations!

The history of BLCU can be traced to Higher Preparatory School for Foreign Students, founded under the direct care and leadership of Premier Zhou in 1962. From then on, remaining true to its respectable aspiration of promoting our diplomacy through cultivating talented people who understand China, BLCU has gone done in history by teaching Chinese and China’s culture to foreigners.

As the center of Chinese International Education, BLCU has been spreading Chinese culture and showing our nature to the whole world. BLCU boasted students from every corner of the world and matters in building friendships with people worldwide, therefore, we enjoy the reputation as Little United Nations. If our return back to U.N. gave us a crucial stage to execute our diplomatic philosophy, then bridging people through language education can be said as a kind of magnificent “diplomacy between people themselves”. Carrying hope and warm care, Chairman Mao wrote down our school name “Beijing Language Institute”.

BLCU has cultured 220,000 skilled people mastering Chinese in 60 years, say, Kazakh President Tokayev, former Ethiopian President Mulatu, and German Sinologist Kubin. These people express our philosophy to the world and promote exchanges and mutual learning between different civilizations. Upholding the pioneering spirit and innovation, teachers from BLCU always devote themselves to language and culture education, as a result, our university has gained the top status in this field. Recently, WuTong, an original drama performed by our teachers and students, represented veteran educators’ determined endeavor to promote Chinese International Education. Their spirit has been passed down, and will always be passed down from generation to generation. We can definitely say that we fulfilled our responsibility to history, proved worthy of our times, and lived up to people's expectations.

Shouldering the glorious responsibility of national rejuvenation, BLCU stays true to our founding mission and forges ahead forever. Its experience has become the spirit of universities: shouldering responsibility for our beloved country, being sincere and adhering to morality, admiring the truth and being creative, and sticking to openness and inclusiveness. Our 60-year journey surges forward with great momentum. Numerous vigorous youth graduated and stepped into the world from here. Having broken through brambles and thorns, you become a BLCUer now, you will share the identity with a lot of excellent alumni and create bright glory.

At the ceremony to mark the centenary of the May Fourth Movement, President Xi Jinping cast 6 expectations on the youth of China in the New Era, beginning with firming ideals and convictions. Ideals are related to beliefs, which are vital to our development. At the historic crossroad of the "Two Centenary Goals", the best conviction is to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. As students of BLCU, you should understand that building a community with a shared future for mankind is vital to mankind. We will replace estrangement with exchange, clashes with mutual learning, superiority with coexistence, and materializing these achievements should always be your dream. Dear students, there is always a path out, and the path is lying at your feet. At this special moment, I want to express three of my expectations to all of you.

First, I hope you can build noble ideals and contribute yourselves to them. It’s a fact down the ages that success lies not only the talent but also the fortitude, as SuShi says. Striving means pursuing meaningful enterprises with arduous efforts. Those who drop something halfway may have endeavored, but they can not be listed in the roll of real fighters. Thanks to the sustained efforts of BLCUers who gained success we all respect, our school can feature in millions of Chinese universities.

During the movement working as a farmer in the countryside in the 1970s, Professor XiaoshengLiang, whose articles such as A Storm is Coming Tonight and Land Of Wonders have been picked in college courses, has started his writing. As a moral standard teacher with a heart connected with ordinary people, he has been persisting in realistic literature. From his 1st writing to now, all his articles touched us by reflecting the whole picture of life and showing the continual progress of our country. After an eight-year polish, his novel A Lifelong Journey, famous a 50-year of Chinese people, has gained Mao Dun Prize for Literature and has been adapted into TV series.

Professor Jingyu Chang, who has been invited to CCTV’s television special First Class of the New Semester, devoted himself to Chinese International Education when reform and opening-up just started. He has gone to hundreds of countries, say, Pakistan, Japan, and Vietnam, and his foreign students have become the leading force in Chinese International Education in their own hometowns. In 1994, he was appointed to teach in the Department of Chinese, Islamabad Language University, Pakistan. He went to this school with his beloved wife Professor Junxuan Yang. Unfortunately, Professor Junxuan Yang deceased two years later.

Dear students, embracing ideals and momentous vocations is a real pictures of them. Their aspiration will encourage us forever!

Our graduate students’ support group was established in September 2012, just 10 years ago. So far, more than 20 teams have gone to the No. 1 Middle School in Yanqi County, Bazhou, Xinjiang to teach, responding to the call of "going to the west, to the grassroots, to the places where the motherland needs most" with practical actions. They devote themselves to teaching, administration, volunteer service and other work. In addition to taking charge of class teaching, they are also responsible for checking classes, adjusting classes, making logs, carrying out league education, organizing cultural activities, and participating in the company of children in welfare homes, community garbage cleaning, street publicity, logistics in scenic areas, as well as voluntary English tutoring for officers and soldiers after school. They are not afraid of hardship, but rise to the challenge, contribute their youth strength in supporting education and increase their knowledge and talents in practice.

Students, the road of struggle will not be smooth, often thorns, full of frustrations. No matter in life or in school, if you encounter setbacks and disappointments, please do not unload the burden and abandon the task, but be brave and diligent and never be discouraged!

The third point, we should have ambitious dreams and be good at learning. "The Analects of Confucius," said: "If you can't learn, you are still afraid of losing it." Learning is not only the premise and reserve of a person's career, but also a rational activity accompanying the whole process of growth. It is often said that illiterate people in modern society are not illiterate people, but people who do not know how to learn. How to become a good learner? I think each student has his own thinking and exploration. But today, I would like to repeat two very important "platitudes" to the students who are about to start their college and graduate study careers in an all-around way.

First, learn to think carefully. Although students learned to think early in their studies, thinking at the higher education level is very different from general thinking. It pays more attention to academic induction and deduction, especially deduction, which is crucial in a college learning career. Einstein once said: "Learning knowledge should be good at thinking, thinking and rethinking. This is the way I become a scientist." Obviously, Einstein's thinking is not thinking in the general sense, which at least includes the ability to find and solve problems, judgment, imagination, deduction, etc. Only by learning to think like this, can we have real academic and ideological experience and gain. Guowei Wang, a master of traditional Chinese culture, is a model who is good at learning and thinking. In the process of studying oracle bone inscriptions, Records of the Historian and other materials, he creatively researched the lineage of the Shang Dynasty's former dukes and kings by using the "double evidence method" of combining aboveground and underground documents. A series of his achievements were praised by Moruo Guo as "shining a strange light on the city base of the old school for thousands of years".

The second is to learn to make progress in concentration. Yuanchen Zhuang, a thinker in the Ming Dynasty, said: "Good scholars pay attention to one thing, while bad scholars focus on all things(善学者穷于一物，不善学者穷于物物）." This saying means that learning should pursue concentration and specialization. In fact, we have such examples around us. Liang Yu, an undergraduate student of the Department of Linguistics in our university, knew little about academic research when she entered the university. In her freshman year, she joined Professor Lu Deprived Scientific Research Innovation Team, which prompted her to gradually develop a conscious awareness of problems in her study. She worked hard on specific academic topics, and finally found a research path. In the past two years, she has completed a national innovation and entrepreneurship project for college students, participated in two international academic conferences, and published two academic papers in cooperation with teachers, transforming from the original "academic white" to "academic calf". In the learning process of "being poor in one thing", Yu Liang's comprehensive knowledge level has also been greatly improved because he has learned with the practical needs of solving problems everywhere, thus understanding by analogy.

Dear students, you are in a critical period of life when you can enter into innovation and creation through continuous learning. I hope you can learn from your previous learning experience and become diligent and good at learning.

Students, flying with roc, can see the vast sky and sea; Walking with BLCU, I am glad to encounter endless hopes and possibilities. When you come to the "small United Nations" to study, you will grow and progress together with outstanding young people all over the world. I hope that students can set up lofty ideals, cherish the great opportunities given by the times, start from today, start from small things, be willing to stick to them, be brave to work, be good at learning, shoulder the responsibility of young people in the new era with unremitting efforts, and support their ideal sky!

I wish you succeed in your studies and live up to your youth!

Thank you!