On the afternoon of May 29, the awarding ceremony for the 2024 SJTU Yang Wing Man Scholarship was held at Yang Wing Man Building on the Minhang Campus. Ms. Yang Wing Man, Honorary President of Hong Kong Zhoushan Clansmen's Association and SJTU Councilor, Ms. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, former Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Honorary Doctor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Mr. Yang Daming, Standing Committee Member of the 14th Shanghai Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and other family members and friends of Dr. Yang Wing Man came to SJTU to attend the ceremony. Xi Lifeng, Executive Vice President of SJTU, Hu Weiwei, Deputy Party Secretary and Vice President of SJTU, Pan Yonghua, former Deputy Party Secretary, Wang Houji, Standing Committee Member of the Party Committee and Director of the United Front Work Department of SJTU, as well as relevant responsible comrades from the SJTU's Educational Development Foundation, the School of Foreign Languages, and the School of International and Public Affairs, and student representatives who received the awards for the year of 2024, attended the ceremony. The ceremony was hosted by Hu Weiwei.

 

 

On behalf of the university, Mr. Xi expressed his heartfelt thanks to Ms Yang Wing Man, Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor  and all the guests for their long-term support for the development of the university, and extended his warm congratulations to the award-winning students. He said that since 2011, Ms. Yang had made five donations to support the university's construction and talent cultivation, and her profound educational sentiment had infected one batch of SJTUers after another. These good deeds not only reflected the great love spirit of Yang Wing Man, but also provided important support for the school to cultivate top-notch innovative talents, and made important contribution to the promotion of Shanghai and Hong Kong's educational and cultural exchanges. Finally, he encouraged the awardees to follow the examples of Ms. Yang and Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, to be grateful and to take up their mission, to turn social care into motivation to serve the country, and to become the pillars of the new era.

 

Shang Biwu reviewed the development of the School of Foreign Languages. He said that in recent years, with the concerted efforts of all students and faculty members, and with the support of the community as represented by Ms Yang Wing Man and Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the SFL had seized the opportunities and worked hard to achieve rapid development. In the fifth round of academic discipline assessment by the Ministry of Education, the discipline of Foreign Languages and Literature ranked among the first class in China. Looking to the future, the SFL will continue to carry out forward-looking research on language acquisition in line with the strategy of a strong education nation; devote itself to the research on language barriers in line with the strategy of a healthy China; strengthen the research on the mutual appreciation of Chinese and foreign civilizations and cross-cultural communication in line with the strategy of a strong culture nation; lay out the research on regional and country-specific studies in line with the national strategy of upgrading global governance; and cultivate forward-looking and innovative talents in foreign languages in line with the national strategy of strengthening the country with talents to provide intellectual support and talents for the development of the country continuously. 

 

Zhu Yifan introduced the assessment of the 2024 Yang Wing Man Scholarship and read out the list of the awarded students. With the support of Ms. Yang, since its establishment in 2017, the award has been given to 155 students, including 115 undergraduates and 40 postgraduates. The awardees have gone on to pursue further studies at top universities at home and abroad, such as Yale University, London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University, Peking University, etc., or have gone on to find employment in party and government organizations such as the State Bureau of Letters and Calls and large-scale corporations, such as Tencent and Jingdong.

 

Ms Yang Wing Man, Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor , Mr. Xi Lifeng and Ms. Vivienne Hu jointly presented certificates of awards to students who have been awarded the 2024 Yang Wing Man Scholarships.

 

To express their gratitude, the awardees prepared a handwritten letter of appreciation and two pieces of calligraphy for Ms. Yang and Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor . One is “Learning from the East and the West, Caring for the Family and the Nation”, which is taken from the selection criteria of the Yang Wing Man Scholarship to express their gratitude to Dr. Yang Wing Man for establishing the Scholarship. The other one is “Tide of Pujiang River surges, Bauhinia flowers bloom”, symbolizing that Shanghai and Hong Kong are like the tides connected, with the flowers blooming in harmony to express gratitude to Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor for strengthening exchanges between the two places.

 

Ms. Lu Yangfan, a German undergraduate student of the Class of 2023, spoke on behalf of the award-winning students. She shared her experience of academic exploration and growth, thanked Ms Yang for her generous financial support and care, and said that she would continue to explore the field of language health, strive to reap more academic results, and transform the research results into social benefits to give back to the university's cultivation and Ms. Yang's support.

 

In her speech, Ms Yang congratulated the students who received the 2024 Yeung Wing Man Scholarships, and expected them to be successful in their studies and grow up to be the pillars of the country in the future. At the same time, she said that she will continue to pay attention to support the development of education in China and contribute to the promotion of education and cultural exchanges between Shanghai and Hong Kong.

 

Dr. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor recalled her interaction with Ms Yang, and highly appreciated her philanthropic efforts in donating funds to schools and her contribution to promoting educational and cultural exchanges between Hong Kong and Shanghai. She also recalled her profound experience visiting mainland universities over the past two years and emphasized that "One Country, Two Systems" was the cornerstone of Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability and must be implemented unswervingly. She believed that culture was the best vehicle for telling China's story and suggested that universities should strengthen interdisciplinary cultural education to promote mutual understanding of civilizations, tell China's story well, and continuously enhance cultural self-confidence. As an honorary doctor of SJTU, she said she would continue to support the university's development, promote cooperation and exchanges between Shanghai and Hong Kong, and contribute to the steady and long-term implementation of "One Country, Two Systems."

 

After the ceremony, the guests visited the Speech-Language-Hearing Research Center in the School of Foreign Languages. In 2019, Dr. Yang donated 3 million to establish a development fund for the school to support the research team of the center. With Dr. Yang's support, the center has become an important part of the national language and health research centers and plays an active role in serving the "Healthy China" strategy.