The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himeself under the restraint of      the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.  ---Confucius

亲爱的2020秋季公派访学高级英语班学员：

   跨文化交际学习，我们一路同行。曾经, 武力是制胜的利器，如今, 智慧才是胜者的法宝。相信本次川外学习之旅已经激发您对全球胜任力拓展的终身热情，愿我们的相聚对您的国际学术交流与人生价值认知带来更加广阔多元的视野。求知若渴，虚心若愚。让我们再次重温Robin老师带给我们的关于CHANGE, BEING 和BECOMING的思考。

  2021，新年快乐！

  四川外国语大学出国培训部

 2020-12-28

Dear class of Autumn 2020,

Congratulations on empowering yourselves with the wisdom of the English language and the vision of cross-cultural    communication. Centuries ago, battles were fought with swords. Today, battles are fought with intelligence. We hope that this SISU experience has inspired you deeply in further expanding your global vision and dexterity.    Please take the SISU adventure as your new stepping stone, develop genuine interest in language learning (Chinese,   English, maybe one more language) and cultural exploration.   

We believe that your overseas academic visits will not only boost your professional expertise exponentially, but also    transform your individual value sets fundamentally.

Again, we would like to THANK YOU for joining us during this gorgeous season of 2020! Your strong commitment has  grown to be a source of inspiration for us to be more devoted language instructors.

As we close our training program, we know that you fully understand the value of English learning and the importance of commitment. Never cease learning, and enjoy all the minor changes (improvements)  you make in English learning each and every day .  Let us take a moment to re-savor the farewell remarks by our beloved instructor Robin.

Happy New Year!

MOE Training Center for Overseas Study, SISU

18 December, 2020

Change, Being and Becoming

Among other things, I have learned not to take words for granted – even ordinary words that one hears everyday in the most ordinary circumstances have seed-like properties and old roots.  It is a solemn habit of mine to go to the river  of the words I know and pick them up one by one – stones of infinite variety.  Turning them over in my mind, I pay       attention to their shape and substance, how smoothed with age, how far removed from their first place, language,      and purpose.

I do this with English and Chinese words and find it quite a useful habit for a language learner. Examining the many layers of each word you’ve picked up along the way, you can let go of feeling hopeless in the face of how many words there are – and pay proper respect to the acquisition of each one.                                                                          

The word ringing in my ears for weeks now is an old one in my own collection – the English word ‘change.’  Its verb & noun forms first rooted in English from the French about 800 years ago – "to alter or make different", "a different  situation”.  By the mid-13th Century its transitive   use emerged– "to substitute one for another...".  In just over a  hundred years, it had grown to include yet more layers of meaning and application including an intransitive use– "to   become different – to be altered".

To say that all is always changing is no great revelation, I know, but the being & becoming nature of change is so   inseparable from our splintered human relationship with time – we change and are changing without noticing from one   instant to the next.We are often caught in the oft repeated lie that nothing changes and that people never do either.  ‘I   am what I am!’, we may say, but the truth is more that we are what we are becoming – and that is always a choice. So often the case, what English took from Old French, the French took from late Latin– "to barter, to exchange...” –which reaches easily beyond mundane matters of commerce when we consider how much energy we invest in negotiating   with and resisting the fearfully perceived value of change.  

Look closer and there in the roots is another connection to a word of Celtic origin– "to bend or crook – to turn... ", –and an adjective in Old Irish– "crooked or curved...".  Immediately I thought of trees seen everywhere in China and the    roads and sidewalks so often laid out to accommodate them, they in turn bending, turning, and twisting their roots around paving bricks.  ‘Let there be these trees’, said the people planning the road; ‘let there be this road’ said the trees – being entirely themselves while peaceably becoming part of something else.  

Trees rooted in the middle of the sidewalk altering the course of people on foot in turn altering the course of cars on   the road remind me that change is a product of being in relationship – will I cut the tree down or let it be –and be changed?

We are not the same people who met here just a few short months ago in September.  We have all changed and been changed. In a few short days, the road that brought you here will turn and bend and carry you elsewhere.  You may or may not have noticed what all has changed within and without, but noticing is simply a matter of choosing to look and see.  To look is to create relationship and what you see is change flowing from it; just ask the physicists among us!  The keen observer is the ultimate change agent.

My thanks to each of you for the good changes you have brought me in this difficult year. May we each go easy into   the new year – in the river of all that is being and becoming. I’ll leave you with this ancient wisdom from West Africa:

When the music changes, so does the dance.