This is the speech given on September 15, 2015 by Andrew Howat, an international graduate student from the United States for the New Graduate Student Convocation of Shanghai International Studies University (SISU).

istinguished faculty, staff, and fellow schoolmates:

Good morning! 大家早上好！ My name is Andrew Howat, or 我叫霍咏之. I am honored by this opportunity to deliver a speech at this opening ceremony. To begin, I'd like to ask a question:

Why are we here? In all senses of this question, why are we here? Why did we get on a bus or a plane or a train and come here, to SISU? For a major, the location, or further opportunities? But even deeper than that, why did we wake up this morning? Why did we step outside into the day?

I arrived in China in 2012 to study Chinese in Xi'an, which became my home for three years. In that time, I studied the language, began to learn the culture, and made some of the closest friends that I have. As I spent time with these friends and their families, something began to click into place, dinner table by dinner table, train track by train track, 一杯茶 by 一杯茶. Parts of me that had been stirring and longing for years began to find answers in China as I saw and experienced the rhythms and patterns of this society. I will never fully be able to walk on the same paths as locals, but I am thankful for every moment I come close to this, a satisfaction thousands of miles from where I was born.

Maybe it was this longing that brought me to China, at least partly: a longing stirred from time in university spent with friends from around the world; a longing that led to another country to learn their language and culture. So three years later, I've learned some Chinese and some about the culture and I continue on here. I cannot fully answer why, but I know a few pieces of why I am here at SISU now, preparing to study Intercultural Communication.

When I first heard about SISU and began researching it, I enjoyed its international quality, how it offers degrees in many languages from around the world, and how it builds an international community. A big lesson I have learned from living in China is how beneficial it is to have good interactions and exchanges with people different from yourself. It seemed like a great fit to come to a university and study this as a field, in an international context, and with the university's motto of “Integrity, Vision, and Academic Excellence, or 格高志远、学贯中外.”

I am not a perfect mirror, and my experience will be different than each of yours, but the question still stands: Why are we here? There are many reasons on the surface that grab at our attention: comfort, pleasure, ease. Not always bad things, but not satisfying to the deepest places in who we are. Down there, under the surface, why are we here? Let this question echo through us as we study and live here at SISU. Let it spark new interests in us and motivate us to step out of our comfort zones. Let's talk to someone we would never talk to otherwise. Let's consider viewpoints we have never thought of before.

Here on campus are many people we would never have met if not at SISU. There are people from other cities, provinces, and countries; people with different family backgrounds; people who talk quite differently from you; people who eat things you would never dream of eating. Let's talk to each other. Let's learn from each other. Let's not let this opportunity rot on the branch like a peach left after harvest. Yes, if a peach rots on the branch it will fall and provide nourishment to the soil for new things to grow. But, what if we ate the peach and shared it with others, then took the seed together to a new place, to grow a tree that will bear fruit for even more people to enjoy? Let's collect seeds together in our time here to scatter around the world, that there would be more peach trees in places that have never even seen a peach. Let's allow our studies, here and now, to make ripples throughout the world and history.

It will not be easy, but it is still good. As we buy pens and open books for the first time, as we study late into the night and write papers on new ideas, as we talk together in the dorms or at meals, let us keep asking, “Why are we here?”

朋友们，有缘千里来相会，让我们珍惜这样一种缘分，珍惜这个难得的机会，相互学习，互相帮助，共同进步吧！谢谢大家！

最后祝各位老师同学身体健康，万事如意！