I Am Not Wishing You Smooth Sailing  (我不祝你一帆风顺), Vincent Chang

President Hai, my fellow faculty members, my dear students and staff, and ladies and gentlemen.

It’s that time of the year again.  To our graduating students, this is a time for excitement, hopes and dreams, perhaps for getting drunk (or maybe you already did so), and perhaps also for making proposals to your future husband or wife (or maybe you already did so).
To us, as your teachers, this is the time that we give our wishes to our students.
However, this is not what I am going to talk about tonight.
I am not going to talk about the many wishes that I will give you. Instead, I am going to talk about the one wish that I am not going to give you.
I am not wishing you smooth sailing!
Why? Why am I not wishing you“Yi Fan Feng Shun (一帆风顺)”?
Two reasons!
First, the reality is that nobody has a life of smooth sailing. At least I have yet to know someone whose life is smooth sailing.
Since my childhood, I have learned a lot about Dr. Sun Yat-sen. According to him, about 80-90% of time things in your life will go against what you have wished.
“This is not true,” countered my private tutor, who was a well-respected master in Chinese philosophy and had enormously rich life experience, and under whom I had learned a great deal of Chinese classics over the course of many years. “It is 99% of the time.”
Well, according to George Washington, it’s almost all the time.
As for me, rough sailing has been constant in my life.
Since you are unlikely to have a smooth-sailing life, I am not going to wish one for you. Particularly, if you want to achieve something great in your life, you should not expect smooth sailing.

The second reason I am not wishing you smooth sailing is that failures, losses and mistakes are great teachers in life.
You should know that although graduation is the end of examinations, it is the beginning of real world learning. When it comes to real world learning, there is no better teacher than losing, failing, and making mistakes.
Let me share a few stories with you.
J.K. Rowling. Before she became the famous author of the Harry Potter stories, she was broke and divorced.  She couldn’t find a light at the end of the tunnel.  Eventually, she decided to stop pretending she was perfect, and started focusing on what she thought was the most important in her life. For her, that was writing.  She said that had she been successful in other things, she would not have focused on writing.
Steve Jobs. By now you should all know quite well about his story, so I’ll be brief. He once said that being fired by Apple was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Just try to imagine being fired by the company you have founded.
Michael Bloomberg. He is a popular mayor of New York City and a possible contender for the US president in the future. Before he was mayor, he was CEO of Bloomberg. Yes, he founded the company that offers the Bloomberg terminals and services that many of you have used. But before he was CEO of Bloomberg, he was fired by Salomon Brothers, then a famous investment bank.
About me. In the late 1990s, I was considered a rising star in a prestigious Wall Street firm. I was appointed head of fixed income investment with country coverage ranging from New Zealand and Australia in the east to India in the west, and from Indonesia in the south to as far north as the Chinese-Russian border.  I told myself, “This is it; this is my career, my life.” Then in 1998, the Asian financial crisis unexpectedly hit hard on the world’s emerging markets.  My golden opportunity and assignment evaporated. I wasn’t fired, but I was completely lost, my dream was broken.

The 1998 Asian financial crisis changed the course my life. After some unexpected journey, I ended up landing here in the Chinese mainland as a professor. I had never thought of coming to the mainland, nor had I ever thought of becoming a professor.  So I am not going to claim that the Asian financial crisis was the best thing that happened to me.  But it did change the course of my life. And most importantly, I like what I am doing here and now at PHBS.
These stories show us that failures can help you get rid of the “irrelevant” or “unimportant” things in life so that you can focus on “relevant” or “important” things, just as failures did for JK Rowling, Steve Jobs, and Mike Bloomberg.
Failures can also help you get rid of “irrelevant” people and keep “true” friends. Why?
If you are successful, people like to surround you. So you assume they like you. But think again.  People like to be associated with success. They like success.  They may or may not like you. If you fail, and someone else succeeds, people may leave you for him.
Because we all like to be surrounded by people, we are all busy exchanging business cards, establishing Guanxi  (关系) and making friends on Facebook or Ren Ren Wang (人人网). But business cards and Guanxi  (关系) do not equate to friends. And friends on Facebook or Ren Ren Wang (人人网) are not your true friends.
So how can you tell true friends from “irrelevant” friends? Failures can help you get rid of irrelevant friends, and keep those who are your true friends.
In my mind, my true friends are not necessarily those who have money, power, or a fancy title. My true friends are those who may have failed miserably, and after their failures, still make the right decisions, still set for themselves the highest standards. My true friends are also those who, when I fail, still treat me with kindness and support.
So this has been very much what I wanted to talk to you about tonight.

I do not want to wish you smooth sailing.
Instead, I want you to embrace failures, losses, and mistakes, because they are the great teachers.
I want you to make true friends who can be supportive of you and you can be supportive of them at any time, of success or failure.
I want you to read a lot and travel a lot so you can connect the dots later in your life and they may come to help make your life extraordinary.
I also want you to think big and work hard, and abide by the highest ethical standards. 
I urge you to do whatever you love for no reason other than the reason that it’s important to you.
And finally, I hope that you will be able to achieve something extraordinary, something bigger than life.
But of course, before your get there, don’t forget that there is no smooth sailing in life.
It’s OK that you fail miserably after trying, because only then are you really, finally graduated.
Godspeed on your life’s journey. 
 

Thank you.