Episode 7
Christina Boyd, Devon Chen, Judy Wang, Keren Zhang
Today’s Agenda:
8:30 AM -> 12:00 PM Leadership workshop:Exploring cultural perspectives on leadership.
12:00 PM -> 12:45 PM Lunch on campus.
1:00 PM -> 2:00 PM Leadership Chat with Professor Xin Feng, China University of Political Science and Law.
2:00 PM -> 5:00 PM Tsinghua University campus tour.
5:30 PM -> 6:30 PM Dinner on-campus.
7:00 PM -> 8:30 PM Group reflection activity on campus.
5-Minutes of Inspiration:
“To lead people, walk beside them... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, people fear; and the next, the people hate... When the best leader’s work is done the people say: ‘We did it ourselves!’” --Lao Tzu
Judy
I am really surprised that how much idea and thought we formulate throughout the process. Fran gave us some great opportunities to discover more about ourselves and people from other backgrounds. I really love when we were making those sculpture from the pipe cleaners, and each cleaner represents the factors that make us who we are today, and during that process, I start to understand how one's upbringing and culture can make such a great impact on people's mindset, and reflect more about what makes me who I am today.
Christina
On Sunday after lunch, we were split into several groups, each led by a graduate GIX students, to tour Tsinghua's amazing campus. The campus is so large that we only toured about 25% of it! We learned that Tsinghua's buildings have four different architecture styles - old Chinese, modern Chinese, European, and Russian. The mixture of these building styles makes the campus unique and beautiful. My favorite part of the campus tour was seeing the old and new libraries! Unfortunately, we couldn't go inside, but it was still really beautiful on the outside. Thank you to our GIX students for being amazing tour guides!
Keren
This afternoon, we were lucky to have Professor Xin Feng from China University of Political Science and Law share his research on typical Chinese rural society and observations of Chinese leadership features. We were introduced to a brand new prospect of the ways culture differences can affect leadership features.
He pointed out the difference between “leadership" and “management” and that the Chinese show stronger “leadership" than American culture do, and American culture presents a stronger management. Afterwards, Professor Xin Feng specifically discussed the theory of rural society, which describes Chinese people’s social rules and those hidden rules. For instance, he mentioned the phrase “free right” which means people who are in control of public resource take the advantage to seek benefit for themselves and their families. Behind this corruption, “Guanxi” is the driving force, and all the small-group relationships make the society more complicated.
By the end, we are able to understand Chinese culture better.
Devon
In the evening, we were greatly honored to have Qiankuan Li, one of the most prominent and prolific film directors in Chinese modern history, and his wife, also an excellent film director, Guiyun Xiao to be present to give us an enlightening lecture.
From his boyhood, Li was deeply attracted by the films played in a theater near his home. Although the appliances were shabby and laggard back then, he was still amazed at what a film can present and bring to its audience, and ever since then he had a dream: be an artist when he grew up.
When Li graduated from high school, he was faced with three choices: to be a director, a pilot or a painter.
“Should I choose to be a pilot at that moment, I would end up being a retired soldier, and painter?... Anyway, if I had chosen those two majors, I would never have accomplished what I have accomplished right now,” said Li.
Unfortunately, Li was among the generation which suffered a lot from the Culture Revolution which lasted for 10 years. After he graduated from college, he was sent to a village, in the name of “Improving the Mind”, to work, eat and live with normal farmers and that was the most terrible life condition he had ever experienced. After he endured that year, there was the Culture Revolution and any cultural activities which were considered “improper” were BANNED by the central government and in those activities, making films was included.
“We were deprived of the most precious 11 years in our life, in which our desire to work hard was the strongest,” said Li.
Getting through all those 11 years of tears, sorrows and bitterness, Li and Xiao finally reached a point where they were free to do what they wanted to do, to become film directors.
Their extraordinary talent in film-making was soon recognized by many professional and experienced directors and some fledgling film companies and that made them really famous and popular.
Then one day, they were given a task by some top-leveled political leaders: make a film (The Founding Ceremony of People’s Republic of China) recording the founding ceremony of People’s Republic of China. The scenario was of tens of thousands of pages and scenes were all full of challenges. While other directors were all complaining about the excess of difficulties in this film, Li and Xian could not even suppress their excitement.
After a long period of industrious filming in a harsh environment (always in extremely high heat), the film was completed. However, there was a problem. Every movie of great significance must be censored before it was played in public back then. While part of the censoring members, who were always vital politicians, praised that movie for its realism, the rest of them thought Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of Kuomingtang (Chinese Nationalist Party), was depicted too amiable in his private life. How surprising that the leader of the most hated enemy of Communist Party, the insidious and crafty dictator, was so amiable to his grandsons. On that point there emerged two completely contradictory ideas which made the film tape submitted to Zhongnanhai (literally Central South Sea, a political building which equals the White House in the USA). Whereas, faced with so many questions and challenges from powerful politicians, Li and Xiao did not choose to yield but, on the contrary, they strongly insisted on their opinion, that, as artists, they needed to depict a character the way he was and tell the very truth. What’s inspiring, the movie got a unanimous consent in the final voting.
As a result, the movie came out to be an unprecedented hit in Chinese movie history and was rated as the most popular movie in China for several years.
In this experience, I really learned something:
Choosing the right path is always far more important than hard-working. We have to find the area that best fits us, and three steps for doing that are Compare, Foresee, and Judge.
Leaders must not be susceptible to others’ ideas. They must know what needs to be done and then make that actually happen.
Only after one has been tested can he/she know his/her real potentials and limits.
