Director Davies, Director Huang, families and friends, all the distinguished guests, good afternoon!

I’m Ding Wenjin, a certificate program student. I’m so honored to be here, representing all Chinese students, to give this speech. This historic moment has finally arrived. Today, we shall be proud to say that we have graduated; today, all of our efforts have been written into history and we will be honorably welcomed into the group of HNC alumni. Starting from tomorrow, the whole outside world is our stage.

I remember the first day we came here, Co-director Huang told us that we are a big family. “Family”, actually, I cannot figure out the real meaning of this word until having experienced so many memorable moments with you all. In this family, we cherish each other, support each other; and we value one thing as a treasure forever, which is the HNC spirit. This kind of spirit is channeled through lovely campus, ourselves and our dear comrades.

We are proud of this celebrated campus. Experiencing a liberally cross-cultural and cross-institutional environment, gathering with so many top students from universities worldwide, exchanging avant-garde thoughts with brilliant minds, absorbing valuable knowledge from excellent professors, having chances to communicate with many influential figures, lecturers and visitors, enjoying a variety of advanced instructional facilities and open information resources, I cannot be more grateful for everything that is provided to us by our lovely Center.

We are proud of each step of our progress, when we stayed up late to prepare a perfect presentation for the next day; when we made painstaking efforts to complete a paper and receive our professor’s comments “well-done”; when activities put on by interest groups got warm response and participation; when we were enlightened by listening to thought-provoking lectures; when our theses prepared for over months finally were passed, all the hard work was worthwhile.

We are proud of each glorious moment experienced by our most awesome classmates, friends and even competitors, when the class committee was successfully elected; when the HNC basketball team lifted the heavy, splendid first place trophy at Nanda’s stadium; when we were deeply inspired and impressed by outstanding HNC alumni’s experience on Career Day in Shanghai; when we followed the HNC news community’s coverage about the latest news about HNC’s Jessup team’s competition in Shandong; when we heard the good news from the HNC Marathon team in Beijing; when we gave our most sincere congratulations to all the MA students for their accomplishments on their thesis and defense; when our loud cheers for the victorious HNC dragon boat team shocked Mochou Lake, we have finally realized what is the real meaning of “family”, and what exactly is the spirit of HNC.

Family is right here, the spirit of HNC will be kept deep in our hearts and we will definitely hold onto this spirit to overcome all difficulties and challenges in the future.

Thank you very much!