香港中文大学（深圳）徐扬生校长在2017年度入学典礼上的讲话

9月3日上午，香港中文大学（深圳）举行了2017年度入学典礼。在入学典礼上，香港中文大学（深圳）校长徐扬生教授嘱托同学们要在大学四年里能够逐渐养成良好的习惯，在四年里能够养成热爱生活，理解世界，积极向上的风气。徐扬生校长还有哪些期盼呢，让我们一同回顾。

Council chairman, Council members, students, parents, secondary school principals, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

Today we have the 2017 Inauguration Ceremony. This year, we have 951 undergraduate students and more than 300 masters and doctoral students joining us. On behalf of all the teachers and students of this University, I would like to extend our warmest welcome and congratulations to you.

This is our fourth year in the running since the inception of this University. Looking back, we have grown from virtually nothing and become stronger with the passage of time, moving steadily towards the goals we set at the founding of this University. At the beginning, we had several dozen staff members. Now, we have more than four thousand teachers, students, and staff members. We have established three Schools and twelve Programmes, which have been widely accepted and recognized by students and parents. We have established three colleges and a newly completed campus. Students can start to live and learn happily in their colleges, develop their interests and likings, and build their own college culture. We can say that the academic year that is about to begin will be an important year in the development of this University as it carries the significance of inheriting the past and opening up the future. The first phase of the construction work of this University has now completed, what follows will be our efforts in consolidating our development and creating a world-class research university.

When New Asia College was founded, Professor Qian Mu admonished his students with the following remarks: “For any undertaking to develop, the major conditions are definitely not from outside, it lies with the inner spirit.” The founding and development of The Chinese University of Hong Kong hinges on this kind of spirit. In those days, what the founders of the Chinese University and the passionate young students embraced and put into practice with great efforts was an ideal in education, which was to promote Chinese culture with humanity education, to communicate with the world with Eastern and Western cultures, and to foster talents for the building of the country. This enabled their ideal to be an undertaking that has been passed on for generations.  When looking at what transpired in the past today, we can take much encouragement and inspiration from it. It is true that time has changed, and the responsibilities we have and the challenges we face are not entirely the same. Yet this spirit remains unchanged. The spirit of being able to brave difficulties and battle on in adversity for the sake of realizing our ideal is a necessary condition for the success of any undertaking.

Dear students, what I would like to talk to you firstly is that your being here at this University owes much to your industry and diligence, and it also owes a lot to many behind-the-scene supporters who make so much giving and care. I therefore hope that you would be grateful and thank your parents and school teachers. At the same time, you should also thank our government and people in our society who offer care and love to you. They are the ones who support this University through building the new campus, setting up scholarships and grants, helping more students to realize their dreams. Here, I would like to ask parents and representatives of school teachers to raise and let us give them a great applause, thanking them for giving us their care and support.

Students, when you become a university student, you could be asking yourselves how you would spend the next four years at this University and what are you getting from it. I would like to offer two suggestions to you.

First, I hope that you could cultivate in time good habits in the four years you are here. A university offers an important period for a person to cultivate good habits. When you miss this period, it will be more difficult for you to do later. A university is not only a place to acquire knowledge, but also, more importantly, a place to shape the person. In more concrete terms, it is a place for you to cultivate a number of good habits, which will form the norms of your behavior for the rest of your life to restrain yourself and lead you on. There are a number of good habits, such as the habit of self-learning, the habit of reading, the habit of time management, the habit of doing exercise, and the habit of being honest. Four years at the university is short, and the knowledge you learn and the abilities you acquire in these four years are limited, but once you form good habits, you could still continue to explore and pursue your goals in life. I therefore would like you to bear in mind not to take the acquisition of knowledge as the primary goal in studying at university as this is no different from “returning empty-handed from a mountain of treasures”. This is because knowledge has its limits, and it could be forgotten, and left aside. If you only take “knowledge learning” as your goal in studying at university, then when you graduate, you would start to worry about the “knowledge” you acquired is beginning to devaluate. On the other hand, if you could learn the good habit of self-learning, then I think when you graduate, I believe your future will be broad, rich, and smooth.

Second, I hope that you could cultivate the attitude of having a passion for life, getting to know the world and moving forward actively. Life is not always a plain sail or filled with beautiful things all the time. How to spend your life well and become a strong person in life therefore depends on your firm determination, ample wisdom, positive mentality, and embracing a continual passion for life. Roman Roland once remarked: “There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.” “To see the world as it is” is to discover and know this world. To achieve this, it requires your ample wisdom and experience. And to be able to love life even after you “see the world as it is” requires your passion that lies in the depth of your heart. If this is not the case, how can you hold on firmly in face of adversity, darkness, hardship, challenges, and fear? I therefore hope that students could pay more attention to the cultivation of fortitude to become persons with depth, resource, and flexibility. You should foster interests and hobbies, make more friends with common ambitions and purposes, visit places to get to know different culture and customs, learn to discover a wider world from reading, learn to appreciate art, learn to marvel at every tree and every blade of grass in nature, and learn to dig out the interest and meaning from things most ordinary and insignificant. To me, this is what university life should give you, and this is also what you should continue to learn and give back to life.

Lastly, I hope that you could treasure the four years you have here, set your goals, make your planning, and starting from today, spend a meaningful university life.

Thank you very much.

香港中文大学（深圳）校长徐扬生教授致辞

理事长、各位理事、各位同学、各位家长、各位中学校长、各位同事、朋友，女士们、先生们：

早上好！今天是2017级新生开学典礼，今年我们将有951位本科生、300多名硕士及博士研究生加入到香港中文大学（深圳）的大家庭，在此我谨代表大学全体师生欢迎你们的到来！祝贺你们！

今年是香港中文大学（深圳）成立的第四个年头，回顾过去，我们从无到有，从微弱逐渐走向壮大，一步一步地向着建校之初的理想迈进。我们从最初的十几位教师和员工发展到今天的四千多名师生员工；我们已设立了三个学院十二个专业，并且广泛地受到学生及家长们的喜爱与认可。我们已经创建了三所书院，以及这个月刚刚完工的全新的校园，同学们将开始在各自的书院中愉快地生活与学习，发展自己的兴趣與爱好，建设自己的书院文化。可以说，我们即将开始的这一年将是大学发展中的至关重要的一年，具有承上启下的意义，大学的前期建设工作已经顺利地告一段落，接下来我们将如何巩固发展，建设一所一流的研究型大学将是我们未来所要努力的方向。

钱穆先生在新亚书院成立之初曾告诫各位同学：“任何一种事业，若求发展，其最主要的条件，绝不是外面的机缘，而是内在的精神。”香港中文大学的成立与发展正是凭着这样一种精神，当年的创校先贤们，和满腔热情的青年学生们胼手胝足地怀抱着，并且践行着一种教育理想——以人文教育宗旨发扬中国文化，沟通世界东西文化，为国家建设培养人才——才得以使这番理想成为了几辈人能够薪火相传的一番事业。重看那段历史，我们今天也能够从中得到无限的鼓舞与激励。虽然时代不同，所面临的责任与挑战也不尽相同，但这种精神不曾改变。为了理想能够不畏艰难，艰苦奋斗的精神，是任何事业得以成功的必要条件。

亲爱的同学们，我首先想同你们讲的是，你之所以能够来到这里，固然有你自己的勤奋努力，但背后也凝聚着许许多多人们的付出与心血，因而我希望你们能够怀抱感恩之心，感谢你们的父母和母校师长，同时，亦要感谢政府及社会各界关心与爱护我们的人们，是他们给予大学的支持，帮助我们建设了崭新的校园，设立奖助学金，帮助更多同学能够实现自己的梦想。在这里，我想请在座的各位家长和中学教师代表起立，让我们大家给他们热烈的掌声，感谢他们对我们的支持与关怀。

同学们，当你成为一名大学生时，你可能会思考：我应该如何度过大学这四年？我希望在大学里收获什么？我在这里提供两个建议，供大家参考。

首先，我希望你们在这四年里能够逐渐养成良好的习惯。大学是一个人培养良好习惯的关键时期，错过了这段时间，之后想要养成良好的习惯就会愈加困难。大学并不仅仅是学习知识的地方，更重要的是对人的培养，具体一点，就是使你养成一个个好的习惯，将之作为自己一生的行为准则，以此约束自己，引导自己走下去。好的习惯有很多，比如自主学习的习惯，阅读的习惯，时间管理的习惯，运动的习惯，与人为善的习惯等等。大学四年是短暂的，在这四年中你能学到的知识，能够掌握的能力都是有限的，但只要你养成了好的习惯，即使你离开了大学，你依然能够不断探索，去追求自己的人生目标。所以，请大家千万不要把学习知识当做进入大学的首要目标，这无异于“入宝山而空手归”，因为知识总是有限的，会被遗忘和淘汰的，如果仅仅将“学知识”当做大学的目的，那么，在你毕业之时，你就要开始担心你所获得“知识”将会开始不断减少，并且不断贬值。但是，如果你在大学能学到一种良好的自我学习的习惯，那么，我想当你毕业的时候，你的未来，我相信会更加开阔，更加丰厚，更加从容。

其次，我希望你们在四年里能够养成热爱生活，理解世界，积极向上的风气。人生并不总是一帆风顺的，也并不总是充满了浪漫美好的事物。因而，如何能够过好这一生，成为生命的强者，那就需要你们具有坚定的意志，足够的智慧，乐观积极的心态，以及对生活抱有永远的热爱。罗曼·罗兰有句话是这样说的：“世界上只有一种真正的英雄主义，那就是在认清生活真相之后依然热爱生活。”认清生活的真相也就是发现和理解这个世界，这需要你有足够的智慧与经验才能够做到，而认清生活的真相后依然热爱它则需要发自内心深处的热情，否则，当你面对种种的不如意，灰暗与艰难，挑战与恐惧，你如何能够勇敢地，坚定不移地坚持下去呢？因此，我希望同学们在大学期间能够更加重视对自己心志的锻炼和培养，将自己变成一个更富有深度，更加丰富，更加柔软的人。多发展几项兴趣爱好，多结识几位志同道合的朋友，多去不同的地方走走看看，领略不一样的风景和风土人情，学会从阅读中发现更广阔的世界，学会欣赏艺术，学会赞叹大自然中的一草一木，学会从最平凡、最微不足道的生活中发现生活的趣味与意义，我想，这才是大学生活应该带给你的，也是你应该不断学习，并回馈给生活的。

最后，我希望大家能够珍惜大学四年的时光，定好目标，做好规划，从今天开始，度过一个有意义的大学生活！

香港中文大学（深圳）校长徐扬生教授接受媒体采访

图片内容由港中大（深圳）传讯与公共关系处提供

摄影/ 陈鸣（CPRO）

           楚翘（2015级经管学院学生）

           黄靖文（2015级经管学院学生）

编辑排版/ 余无尘（2016级人文社科学院学生）