The President's Speech:

Stepping into the New Century

    ----------To all the Peking University alumni

Dear fellow alumni,
    On the occasion of the publication of Newsletter to the Peking University Alumni (Beidaren), I wish to extend to all of you my most cordial greetings and most sincere congratulations. In the jubilant atmosphere of celebrating both our great motherland's fiftieth birthday and Macao's returning to her embrace, and in the rumble of bells and drums launching the strategy of "developing our country through science and education"------a kind of intelligent repercussion of the Oriental on the verge of the fresh cultural choice, our Alma Mater has correspondingly established her magnificent goal of constructing a world-class university, and is striving to realize the ideal which generation after generation of Beidaers have been assiduously seeking after.
    To the Beidaers, "Yanyuan is really no large place with the Lake Nameless no more than a spoonful water. At the waterside, a pagoda remains inaccessible for mounting; in the middle of the lake is imbedded an islet, to encompass which it takes only a hundred steps' walk; there are additionally tens of pavilions and high buildings, and that's all. Nonetheless, it is this comparatively small campus that has made all her former residents get addicted to the life-long reveries." Within the garden where "all-inclusiveness" has become a long-standing tradition, the classical and the modern, the Oriental and the Occidental, the humanities and physics, all have been plunged into a uniform smelting furnace of thinking, fusing, combining, resolving, and ending in a renascence. Throughout this vicissitudinous centenary, our Alma Mater has had great influence upon Chinese history consisting not only in her unintermittedly leading the van of China's modern history, but also in her cultivating countless talents and forging numerous pillars for the state and the society------they have labeled themselves as Beidaers with their broad view and great foresight, their courageous and energetic advancing, their all-embracing and readily receptive minds, as well as their exemplary personality and interest.
    For a century, Beidaers have been making great efforts in the interests of academic flourishing and national prosperity. Their outstanding merit has merged into the country's history; their concern and support have cast a centennial monument for our Alma Mater. The centennial celebration is all the more a cynosure of the attachment of the alumni from home and abroad to their old school. Getting united as one, they have spared no pains and devoted their entire thought, making contributions during this progressing century. And besides, such world-shaking achievements as the successful trial flight of "the two bombs and one satellite (the hydrogen and atomic bombs and China's first man-made satellite)", the synthesis of crystalline bovine insulin, the development of the nana technologies and of the laser photo typesetting technology, the fruitful research in the fields of national culture and religious aesthetics, have rendered Beidaers more eligible for evidencing this amazing age.
    And now, a century of transmigration has faded away from beneath the wheels of history; then in the sonorous and rhythmic striking of the new century, how could our Alma Mater find a new cultural fulcrum by way of countenancing herself?
     At present, our Alma Mater is facing an unprecedented historical opportunity------to construct a world-class university. This objective of struggle has been enhanced to the level of national strategy and governmental action. It is our Alma Mater's solemn mission our motherland has entrusted to her, as well as her necessary choice in the face of the 21st century. To say proudly, what we are in possession of is the immortal spirit of this centennial school. On this piece of holy land where China was ushered into a new epoch, any miraculous occurrence is rendered foreseeable. Upholding unity, readily adopting good ideas, making concerted efforts, cooperating with great undertakings------that is the most persuasive pattern for our construction of the world-class university in the 21st century, and is also an irrefutable prerequisite for national prosperity. Beidaers' success has laid the foundation for our Alma Mater's further development; and conversely, her construction and improvement want even more the passionate participation of and the wholehearted support from her sons and daughters. Only in this way can our Alma Mater make extraordinary attainments in answering and solving both theoretical and practical problems arising during the course of China's modernization; and only in this way can she tower among the world-class universities.
     "The pilgrimage seems long and far, but I will do my utmost in my exploration". There is still a long way for us to go in constructing our Alma Mater. Now, bathing in the splendid rays of the new centenary, and entrusted with significant tasks by the glorious 20th century, all the fellow alumni are playing the cultured pioneers to break through the old ideas and to blaze new trails. This requires not just the lofty and ambitious aspirations, but also the earnest and down-to-earth style of work. Let's keep forging ahead and maintaining solidarity, striding forward high-spiritedly and uprightly along the broad road orienting towards constructing a world-class university, and creating our new brilliance, which is beyond our predecessors' and worthy of the name of our age.

Xu Zhihong

12/15/99