Speech By Freshman Representative Yuqing Yang at The Inauguration Ceremony 2019

Distinguished guests, dear teachers and students,

        Good morning！ I'm Yang Yuqing from SME, MUSE college, and I’ve just graduated from Hangzhou No.2 High School in Zhejiang Province. Today I feel so honored to be an undergraduate student at the CUHK-Shenzhen and equally honored to stand here delivering this speech on behalf of my fellow students.

        Most of us seldom have the time and awareness to carefully plan our future since we have been preparing for college entrance exam for so many years. Just like everybody else, I used to throw myself into the heavy schoolwork for a higher grade without considering my future development, until I’m impressed by the philosophy of education of CUHK- Shenzhen.

        In my point of view, university should be a goodbye to the past as well as a brand new start, where everything is back to the beginning and we can restart to pursue what we want. University is also, in every sense, a new life for us, as we gradually begin to integrate into the real society and become an adult who can handle the ups-and-downs in our life. On the other hand, university brings us challenges we have probably never faced with before, and it constantly tests our ability to dream, to think, to create, to act and to have self-discipline. I’m excited to find out that CUHK-Shenzhen is an energetic and creative university with a serious academic atmosphere featuring freedom. It also attaches great importance to the personal development of each student, allowing us to grow in our unique paces and finally into a well-rounded individual. I strongly believe that I can realize my dream here, that is to stay curious and ambitious, to be tolerant and pure and to be always ready to redefine myself.

        At this juncture of my life, I held sincere gratitude towards my family, my teachers and my friends. Everyday, I feel blessed to have these people backing me up and always there for me. It is with their love and support that I can enter my dream university. I truly feel lucky to be here, and I’m also happy to have you, my fellow students, to have this luckiness as well.

        CUHK-Shenzhen lies in the most innovative city in China, Shenzhen. Here everything is changing quickly beyond our imagination. The artifi- cial intelligence, the highly developed techniques, the 5G technology, etc. all make us feel that we’ll never know what will happen the next instance. As China will support Shenzhen in building a demonstration pilot zone for socialism with Chinese characters to deepen the reform and opening up comprehensively, the development and the pace of Shenzhen is only going to be more and more rapid. City and individuals are interestingly linked together. The features of this young city is bound to influence us with its freedom and creativity. Meanwhile, the people here, especially we youth, will make differences in building up a civilized and agreeable city if we can stay passionate and shoulder our responsibilities.

        And we’re also, to some extend, linked with our country. 2019 witnesses the 70th birthday of our nation, a country that came into being in distress and unrest and later grew up despite of those obstacles and barriers. We can see now that the world is bound to step towards the globalization, indicating that China will meet with much more challenges and chances. It is an inevitable trend for our young people to step outside to embrace the world, but we also should have the faith to devote ourselves to the construction of our country, striving for a promising future of China.

        So my fellow students, as the 70th  Anniversary of our motherland is coming, let’s just aim high, dare to dream and seize the day. Let’s just step forward and be brave to meet new challenges. Let’s just contribute our individual energy to a stronger China and a better world. Let’s just prepare ourselves to start a brand new chapter of our life in CUHK-Shenzhen from today on. Thank you！