On September 1st, Fu Tingdong, an 81-year-old Academician from College of Plant Science and Technology, gave an orientation speech centered on “working hard for our motherland” for 374 freshmen from the College.
He shared his personal education experience. He then stressed how important it would be to put theory into practice, and offers a few suggestions for students’ future learning, to be more specific, the learning goal, time management and making best use of every lecture.

“Opportunities always favor those who are prepared” says Fu. As he pointed out, perseverance means victory while complacency failure. In addition, he told us his secret to overcoming difficulties by stating “power can be only gained by the combination of knowledge, solidarity, confidence, gratefulness, responsibility and role models.” He also advises students to improve AQ (Adversity Quotient).
After analyzing the world current development of rape, he introduced many breakthroughs his team has made in recent years, including the state-of-the-art achievements in rape’s salt alkaline tolerance and breeding for disease resistance. Moreover, he introduced how widely the Multiple Cropping Rape (green manure) has been planted in the northwest China and north China. With the example of discovery of polima cytoplasmic male sterility (Pol CMS), he continued, “All of you can contribute to domestic even international agricultural production if you follow the right direction and word hard with full confidence!”

Fu had published Journey to the Agriculture, a science popularization book on rape. The book is about the experience in their agricultural tour of four characters in classic novel Pilgrim to the West. He cited an example in the book to demonstrate that hybridization can make great difference in breed improvement. Talking of his writing experience, he explained that interest could be both fostered and integrated, and it would be more unique to combine our interest with speciality. By the end of his speech, he encouraged those young students to “seize the opportunity, work hard, and make a difference!”
After his speech, students are highly motivated. One of those students said: “I firmly believe that we are not studying for ourselves, but also for people’s well-being, our country and society at large.”

Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2019/0902/54816.shtml
Translated by: Liu Yuhan
Supervised by: Guo Haiyan