Here we go. Shi inspirational speech: satisfaction is the enemy of innovation
I'm nervous. I want to ask if there are any people from Henan here first. (yes! ) Almost half, because I'm from Henan or Zhumadian, so I have to know my hometown before I go anywhere. I think this is also a part of China's traditional culture. So far, I am actually a product of China culture. I am very lucky. I walked to Tsinghua without an exam. I was in a daze when I entered school. When I came out of school, I felt as if I already knew the world very well, but an incident in Tsinghua had a great influence on me.
It was when I first entered the university in the third year, and my dear father suddenly left me. On the morning of September 2 1, before the last class of Class 4 ended, an old man in the reception room suddenly walked into our classroom. He asked everyone, and he said, excuse me, is there a man named Shi here? I said I am. He said something happened at home. Come out quickly. I was worried. I didn't know what was going on. When I came out, I read the telegram. My sister only gave me seven words: my father is in critical condition, go home quickly! I took my schoolbag and didn't go back to the dormitory. I ran to the railway station and jumped on the first express train to Zhengzhou at half past twelve. I seldom shed tears. I should say that I didn't even know when I shed tears last time. But I couldn't help it on the train. I don't know what happened at home. At 9 o'clock in the evening, the train arrived in Zhengzhou, and I didn't have time to wait for the bus. I ran home from Zhengzhou Railway Station, hoping to see my father. But at home, under the building, I went to the door and saw several wreaths.
I was desperate at that time, and I was still imagining that this was not my father. I ran to the fourth floor, knocked at the door, and saw the wreath at home and my father's elegy. At that time, I collapsed and couldn't restrain my feelings. In fact, my father was knocked down by a taxi driver on his way from work two days ago. My father was still in a coma when the driver took him to the emergency room of the hospital. Later, we checked the records. At that time, blood pressure 130, 80 and pulse 62 were all normal. I believe my father will see me today if I am rescued normally. However, at that time, there was a rule in the emergency room that people who went to the emergency room had to pay a 500 yuan deposit to be rescued. The 500 yuan of 1987 was even more difficult than the 500,000 I think now. It took the driver four and a half hours to collect 500 yuan while driving. When he returned to the emergency room of the People's Hospital at eleven o'clock in the evening, my father's pulse was gone, zero, heartbeat and blood pressure were gone, and he could not measure it. I can't imagine why it happened to me, to our family, and why I have to bear all this. In the third year of college, all my values and worldview collapsed. I will get up at two or three in the middle of the night and run to Yuanmingyuan many times until I am exhausted and cry, and then I can return to my dormitory to start a normal life in the early hours of the morning. Actually, I've been thinking about it for a long time. After my father died, I felt that I was not only as ignorant as before. I will continue my studies and maybe become a scientist in the future. So in my junior year, I told myself that I must change the society, and I want to go into politics, because I think politics can directly bring benefits to a city, a village, a province and an industry.
In China in the 1980s, all kinds of ideas impacted us, so my idea of going into politics did not advance after two years. I graduated one year early and can't wait to enter the society. You can't imagine my first job. I went to Hong Kong to do business, and all the contracts were signed. After signing, the contract was void before it was fulfilled, and I lost my job before I found a job. I've been thinking all night. On the third floor of Building 7 in Tsinghua University Student Dormitory, I decided to study abroad and have a look. When I first went to America, I was very confused. I want to change careers. I want to switch to computers and management. I think I must take good care of my mother. I want to make money and think a lot. But I didn't expect that as soon as I entered the laboratory, I found that it was so wonderful in the hall of scientific research that it was beyond your imagination.
1995 I received my doctorate from the biophysics department of Hopkins University. Although I feel that I have basically decided to study, I always hope that I will not regret it. I interviewed for several positions and got the position of chief representative of an insurance company in China. At that time, an interviewer told me that he said, Xiaoshi, China's insurance law has just been liberalized. You join us, we enter the China market. In the blink of an eye, you will earn six figures. You know what six figures are, and then you will be a pioneer in the China market. I thought it was fun at that time, but it was really not refreshing because I didn't think it was romantic enough. In fact, the main purpose of my interview is to convince myself to study. Doing science is the most romantic thing and the most coveted thing. When you follow your own interests, really follow your own interests, you must go on firmly and don't be easily moved by people and things around you. For me, engaging in scientific research has always been the right path, and I will never be moved or interrupted by things around me. I also hope that our friends, classmates and classmates present here can follow their own path and not be easily drawn by the values around them, especially the heroic values based on money.
Of course, my father has the greatest influence on me, and I have been thinking about what my father expects of me and how I can take the next step forward. I wanted to go back to China when I graduated from my doctor's degree. In fact, our generation of students once thought that the United States was a beautiful, free and completely democratic country. In fact, my first disillusionment was after I arrived in America, where I was robbed once and my car was stolen once. After arriving in the United States, the experience of one, two or three years made me start to look at the surrounding environment and the world objectively, stabilized my worldview again, and even returned to the scale of the worldview that my parents might expect of me. So on 1995, when I graduated from my doctorate, I wanted to go back to China. My wife Ren Bin asked me, what can you do when you return to China? You just graduated from a doctor's degree, and there is no shortage of people like you in China. At that time, I replied that there were at least three things I could do when I returned to China: First, I could go to my middle school, be an English teacher or a math teacher, and I won the first prize in the math competition in Henan Province. I said, my middle school doesn't want me, and what if I don't have the qualification to be a teacher? Then I said I could be a tour guide. I like traveling. When I was young, when I was your age, I could join a tour group. Go to the tourist attractions now and take a small red flag and a tour group. I can explain it in Chinese and English. If not, I can drive a taxi at any time. How cool our taxi driver is on the streets of Beijing. How generous and talkative, you can call me taxi brother, no problem, and I like driving. I have never felt that there is no difficulty in the world. I want to open my mind and think clearly. It's good to say the least. But after all, I am still a little unwilling. If I really want to come back, I want to take a step forward, because you are using your talents to create wealth for the society, and it is romantic to push the society forward with your own strength. So I studied as a postdoctoral fellow. From the beginning of postdoctoral research, from the spring of 1995 to now, I have been engaged in a relatively independent scientific career for 22 years. It should be said that this is my most peaceful and satisfying career. I sometimes write a few words to my father in my spare time, telling him what academic achievements I have made, what applications my achievements may have in the future, and what value they will bring to society. I'll explain to my father. Doing academic work restored my inner peace and gave me a lot of satisfaction.
If you ask me the purpose of returning to China ten years ago, it is actually very simple. I want to influence a group of young people and cultivate the best innovative young talents. Although I wanted to return to China on 1995, it was not until 2007 that I began to train my first doctoral student in Tsinghua. Twelve years later, I spent another twelve years preparing. I have been wondering whether what I did in Princeton can be replicated in Tsinghua in the future. I am often unbalanced, too What is imbalance? We always take us international students who go abroad to study in the United States as an example, saying that you see how good these people are in the United States, but to be honest, they are not doing well. In my Tsinghua 1985, undergraduate 225 1 person. One year after graduation and one year after graduation, I estimate that 1.67 million went to the United States, and most of them were still in the United States. I don't have accurate statistics. Why tell you this? I'm telling you, I'm unbalanced. We have so many excellent overseas students from China and China, but how many of them can stand out? This ratio is very small, very small. So, when I became an assistant professor at Princeton, I felt more and more unbalanced. I visited a multinational pharmaceutical company, and the people who received me and talked to me were all white, while the people who worked below were very nice. They are students from Peking University, Tsinghua, Fudan University and Jiaotong University, and their intelligence, ability and knowledge are far higher than theirs. Because in our culture, there is a saying that contentment is always happy, and contentment is always used to pursue life and material interests. However, for those of us who have actually received university education and obtained some special educational backgrounds, we China people are still satisfied when we go to the United States and overseas. This is a big problem. So I have been unbalanced, which is why I want to go back to Tsinghua and Tsinghua.
I sometimes think that Tsinghua is strong and China is strong. When I first returned to China, I once vowed to change one-third of Tsinghua students and let one-third of Tsinghua students stop worrying about daily necessities. I think it will be a very powerful force, a revolution and a better China. In fact, you think that if there are 3,000 students in Tsinghua every year, if we don't have a group of students, if we can finally satisfy ourselves and have this romantic feeling of caring for society, it will be bad, really bad, and this is a very, very regrettable thing. Actually, I'm worried. Why do people study? So that's what happened. It turns out that the world wants to see through the world of mortals and thinks that the world is so much. In the end, I still ask people not to do it for themselves. I don't understand this. I really don't understand. When I was very young, I vaguely felt that my parents and teachers wanted me to be able to do things and do great things when I grew up. When my primary school political teacher told me, "Shi, when you grow up, you will win honor for the people of Zhumadian." I still remember, even when I was most devastated, I kept a diary, patted my chest and encouraged myself, saying don't forget that you are a stone, and don't forget that you are going to do great things. Actually, I don't know what this big event is. It's true. Although I don't know what to do, I have been encouraging me to do great things. In my opinion, no matter what you do, the last point is whether you can realize your value as a person and bring value to society. When you can't bring value to society, I think there is something wrong with the realization of your value as a person. So I hope everyone here will think about it and have their own independent judgment. Life is only once. If you don't experience life to the extreme, you won't regret it!
I have been thinking about how to encourage innovation. The average value of our graduates from Huada University is very high, but the variance is very small. We don't like everyone to be unconventional. We like everyone to follow the rules, walk and sit, and try to unify their clothes and hairstyles. In this case, students' way of thinking and so on are also imprisoned, which, to be honest, hinders innovation. Because I grew up in China and stayed in the United States for a long time. For more than ten years, I have always compared advantages and disadvantages. I'm thinking that education equity in the United States is guaranteed by public universities, but social Excellence and technical Excellence are basically guaranteed by private universities. From Caltech and Stanford on the west coast to Princeton, Harvard and Yale on the east coast, these super-class schools are all private. For a strong country, national security depends on Excellence, and this Excellence must be guaranteed in a special way. How can we do that? We hope to establish the first modern and world-class research-oriented private university in China by the beautiful Xizi Lake. The name of this university is West Lake University, West Lake University. I believe that private universities will complement our public universities, and they will also cultivate cutting-edge talents for the country and society. In the next 30 or 50 years, our descendants will be able to tell the world that we China people have made contributions commensurate with our national population and historical traditions and promoted the development of world civilization. To do this, we need innovation, and this kind of innovation needs the joint efforts of the whole society. Ok, thank you!
Here we go. Key points of Shi's speech:
1, my sister has only seven words: father is critically ill, go home quickly! I took my schoolbag and didn't go back to the dormitory. I ran to the railway station and jumped on the first express train to Zhengzhou at half past twelve.
2. I will get up in the middle of the night many times and run to Yuanmingyuan at two or three o'clock until I run out of energy and cry, and then I can return to my dormitory to start a normal life in the early hours of the morning.
Doing science is the most romantic thing and the most coveted thing.
I sometimes write a few words to my father in my spare time, telling him what academic achievements I have made, what applications these achievements may have in the future, and what value they will bring to society.
5, contentment is not a good thing for highly educated students.
6, life is only once, do not experience life to the extreme, do not regret!