{"id":489,"date":"2017-12-07T06:54:37","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T22:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/2017\/12\/07\/us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech\/"},"modified":"2025-01-01T21:35:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T13:35:30","slug":"us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"US Student Slams Trump At Peking University Graduation Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>An American student studying in the prestigious Peking University criticised US President Donald Trump in his graduation speech last week, comparing his state leader to China\u2019s first emperor Qin Shi Huang.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>An American student studying in the prestigious Peking University criticised US President Donald Trump in his graduation speech last week, comparing his state leader to China\u2019s first emperor Qin Shi Huang.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FivlAMnQ18z2W95ZFKUJgCVgvQ4L?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"1.jpg\" width=\"589\" height=\"392.274\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_73 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-5'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech\/#Cody_Irwin_speaking_at_the_graduating_ceremony_of_Peking_University_Photo_Sohu\" title=\"Cody Irwin speaking at the graduating ceremony of Peking University. \u00a0Photo: Sohu\">Cody Irwin speaking at the graduating ceremony of Peking University. \u00a0Photo: Sohu<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-5'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech\/#Photo_Sohu\" title=\"Photo:Sohu\">Photo:Sohu<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-5'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech\/#Photo_Sohu-2\" title=\"Photo:Sohu\">Photo:Sohu<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h5><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Cody_Irwin_speaking_at_the_graduating_ceremony_of_Peking_University_Photo_Sohu\"><\/span>Cody Irwin speaking at the graduating ceremony of Peking University. \u00a0Photo: Sohu<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Cody Abbey\u2019s speech won him resounding applause from thousands of students and educators at his graduation ceremony last Wednesday, according to a video that went viral on Chinese <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/social\/\" title=\"View all posts in social\" >social<\/a> media this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe new president of my country likes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/jobs\">China in part<\/a> because he admires China\u2019s Great Wall,\u201d Abbey, a graduate student in China studies, said in fluent Mandarin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not because the Great Wall is a cultural heritage, but he wants to be like Emperor Qin Shi Huang and build a barrier separating people from those outside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The remarks in Abbey\u2019s 12-minute speech were followed by loud claps and cheers from the crowd that went on for almost 20 seconds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FuJ6uw-44DPRdR1jd6S0xHroaPlS?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"2.jpg\" width=\"589\" height=\"395.808\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<h5><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Photo_Sohu\"><\/span>Photo:Sohu<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the first monarch of a unified China, formed in 221BC. The tyrannical ruler is most well known for ordering the building of the Great Wall, the burning of books, and the burying of Confucius scholars alive in a massive pit.<\/p>\n<p>His empire collapsed immediately after he died in 210 BC due to massive uprisings.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has proposed building a wall to stop illegal immigrants from Mexico into the United States through their shared border. He has said that the<a href=\"https:\/\/dictionary.cambridge.org\/dictionary\/english\/project\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> project<\/a> would be \u201cpeanuts\u201d compared with the Great Wall of China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FmUWNst4b5m3fsciJXYTf6nac3ns?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"3.jpg\" width=\"589\" height=\"441.75\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<h5><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Photo_Sohu-2\"><\/span>Photo:Sohu<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Abbey was studying at Peking University\u2019s Yenching Academy, an interdisciplinary master\u2019s programme that takes in more than 20 participants from around the world each year to study China-related issues.<\/p>\n<p>While Abbey\u2019s speech received mostly positive feedback on Chinese <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/social-media\/\" title=\"View all posts in social media\">social media<\/a>, some internet users raised concerns that his critical comments of Trump could get him into trouble with his fellow Americans.<\/p>\n<h5><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FmBQykT3PSjSBdcOhb-Zl7ucYeoy?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"4.jpg\" width=\"589\" height=\"355.756\" title=\"\"><\/h5>\n<p>Photo:Sohu<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>\u201cI<span> don\u2019t know whether the Americans will brand him a traitor after watching the speech,\u201d Sina Weibo user XiaoxiaoxiaoMJ wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Another Weibo user, Jiangqiqiyoubao, wrote: \u201cTrump may cry. Will this young man be able to go back to the US?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Others were not so worried about the American reception to Abbey\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nothing. American celebrities humiliate their president on television every day,\u201d wrote Yilianmeirenzhiyizuixiaohuya.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #e33737;\">Read Abbey\u2019s full speech\u00a0here:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p>Dear faculty, classmates, and guests:<\/p>\n<p>Good morning!<\/p>\n<p>In the past, in the United States, I\u2019ve studied Confucianism. From it, the <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/teaching\/\" title=\"View all posts in teaching\">teaching<\/a> \u201cthe superior man strives for harmony despite differences with others\u201d left me with a deep impression. These past two years, this principle of \u201cdifferent but harmonious\u201d defined my growth process at Peking University, and it will continue to guide me for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I\u2019ll use three stories to explain why this is.<\/p>\n<p>The first story taught me the first aspect of \u201cdifferent but harmonious\u201d: getting to know others.<\/p>\n<p>In May of last year, my <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/department\/\" title=\"View all posts in department\">department<\/a> organized a field research trip to Ningxia. Altogether, there were 21 Yenching Academy students who went, including twelve female students and nine male students. The lodging arrangements were that there would be two students to each hotel room. Now, although I come from a country that has performed among the worst on the PISA test\u2019s math section, at that time I was able to calculate that this meant that one male student would not be living with another Yenching Academy classmate. That male student ended up being me. After looking at the name list, I discovered that my roommate would be a PhD student in the sociology department named Yang Le. He would be the teaching assistant on our trip.<\/p>\n<p>Very quickly, I noticed that Yang Le was quite different from me, and even quite different from many Chinese people I knew. On the very first morning, upon getting out of bed I found Yang Le positioned in a squat, his back against the wall, and both of his eyes closed. Here, I\u2019ll demonstrate it for you. [Demonstrates squat.] He told me that this posture is called \u201cthe beggar\u2019s squat\u201d and that it was a way that beggars in ancient times would digest and exercise after eating. Yang Le taught me how to hold this posture, but after ten minutes I discovered that beggars in ancient China had better endurance than I did.<\/p>\n<p>To a large extent, Yang Le\u2019s life followed the principles of yin-yang and the Five Elements in Chinese philosophy. One time when we were eating, he said to me, \u201cCody, the month of May is too early of a time to eat watermelon. You\u2019d best wait until June. That way, you won\u2019t catch a chill.\u201d Another time, he gave me some garlic powder to eat. \u201cThis will help you to keep out the cold,\u201d he said. I nodded, but I had no idea what he meant by \u201ckeep out the cold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There were simply too many differences between Yang Le and me, but to my surprise this actually made us become evermore close. Everyday we would talk late into the night about philosophy, religion, and life. Yang Le \u2013 of all people at Peking University \u2013 has left one of the deepest impressions on me.<\/p>\n<p>The second story taught me the second aspect of \u201cdifferent but harmonious\u201d: understanding others.<\/p>\n<p>Last semester I joined Peking University\u2019s Cycling Association, but upon entering I was a bit shocked by some of the Cycling Association\u2019s rules. For example, one time when we were camping outside, we absolutely had to go to bed by 11:00 p.m. We also generally need to cheer \u201cgood luck!\u201d in a simultaneous fashion, and members who are late are required to run laps as punishment. I\u2019ve heard that the Peking University Eagles Mountaineering Club is even stricter, barring members who arrive just one or two minutes after the scheduled meeting time from attending the hike at all. Now, as an <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/international\/\" title=\"View all posts in international\">international<\/a> student who grew up in the U.S., I\u2019ve never encountered extracurricular activities with this many rules before. As I remember, in U.S. college student associations, being a few minutes late is a pretty common occurrence, and sometimes while camping outdoors there are even classmates who will carefreely run naked through the forest in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n<p>So, at first the Cycling Association\u2019s rules were a bit hard for me to get used to, but as I became more involved my thoughts slowly started to change. I saw a veteran member push a bike 150 kilometers to help a new member that was injured. I smelled the aroma of the lunch that our team members who had biked ahead of us had ordered well in advance. I heard the cheers of the other cycling association members who were patiently waiting for us each time we returned from a long trip. Slowly, I began to understand the meaning of the Cycling Association\u2019s regulations; I started to realize that there isn\u2019t just one way of running a student association; and I more and more whole-heartedly joined others in cheering \u201cgood luck!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The third story taught me the third and final aspect of \u201cdifferent but harmonious\u201d: friendship with others.<\/p>\n<p>About two years ago, I met some Peking University undergraduate students at a social service forum. Although I didn\u2019t know it then, these students were actually from China\u2019s impoverished regions; they were what you would call in Chinese \u201cchildren who succeed in spite of their poor backgrounds (hanmen chu de guizi).\u201d They wanted to improve their English, and students from our department wanted to integrate more with the rest of campus. The merging of these ideas resulted in a weekly activity on Friday afternoons: the English News Discussion Group.<\/p>\n<p>The discussion group\u2019s participants consist of Yenching Academy Master\u2019s students from different countries as well as undergraduate students from other departments who come from different provinces of China. The topics we talk about are equally as diverse as the participants: Why does the media focus the most on terrorist attacks in Europe specifically? What will be the future impact of the U.S. election on China? Do boys labeled as being so-called \u201ceffeminate\u201d need more male teachers to serve as role models?<\/p>\n<p>Now, this kind of activity would be extremely difficult to organize in the United States, especially recently. Nowadays, if a person discovers that a classmate\u2019s or a neighbor\u2019s political stance is different from his or her own, very often this will instantly result in the immediate end of their friendship, and just like that they will no longer talk to each other. It seems like people are becoming increasingly fearful of communicating with those who have different viewpoints from their own. Yet, these past two years at Peking University, through scores of deep discussions, we students who hail from many places across the globe have become friends who get along quite well.<\/p>\n<p>Through these stories, the main point I wish to emphasize is that every person can do one thing to make the world a better place. That one thing isn\u2019t necessarily donating to charitable organizations, and it\u2019s not necessarily becoming a volunteer. Rather, that one thing is interacting with people who are different from us.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, international dialogue has been increasing, but populism and anti-globalization are also rising. Terrorist attacks are a common occurrence, and the conflict of war has resulted in refugees with no place to go. The reason the new president of my country likes China is because he admires the Great Wall. He admires it not because the Great Wall is a part of China\u2019s cultural heritage; rather, he admires it because just like the First Qin Emperor, he wants to build a barrier like this and cut off Americans from those outside our borders.<\/p>\n<p>How many conflicts on earth occur because there is too little dialogue between people? I believe that many are that way. On the surface, it appears that everyday people have no way of solving international issues. But in reality, all people \u2013 those from all walks of life \u2013 can change the world one bit at a time through intercultural dialogue. Each day, everyone could try to be just a little more open, just a little more tolerant. Get to know others, understand others, and form friendships with others. That way, we can be just like Confucius once said, \u201cdifferent but harmonious.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FlXXlKXBxtykYAuKbjvAxKMwIbVH?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"GIC.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"488.9643463497453\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American student studying in the prestigious Peking University criticised US President Donald Trump in his graduation speech last week, comparing his state leader to China\u2019s first emperor Qin Shi &#8230;","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[60,1954,353,306,1891,29,34,3557,826,701,3624],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-department","tag-e-china-cities","tag-hiredchina","tag-international","tag-jobs","tag-jobs-in-china","tag-social","tag-social-media","tag-teaching","tag-us-student-slams-trump-at-peking-university-graduation-speech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25702,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/25702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}