[Brazil] Talenta Luhua Yan, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
When studying in China, I’ve once taken the leadership course provided by my university and was impressed by a “hopscotch” game, in which the lecturer would draw blank squares on the ground beforehand and students were asked to walk on this road of squares and discover a right route.
“Hi, you’re in the wrong square,” the teacher said to the first student. Since he was in the wrong square, according to the game rule, he had to go to the end of the queue and waited for his next turn to try.
It’s my turn now. Having seen the failure of the first student, I tried to walk in the rightmost square. After standing still, I saw the teacher smiled and nodded at me, and I felt confident at once. Then I followed my nose and went to the middle square on the second row. Unfortunately, this time I chose the wrong square. However, as the old Chinese saying goes, “Lose at sunrise and gain at sunset.” Taking gain and loss dialectically is a positive and optimistic attitude of life.
In this way, with classmates’ repeated tries, we arrived at the midway, where we met the biggest obstacle of the game. Though we’d tried all the five squares of the middle row, the teacher always replied “wrong.” With “hopscotch” as the name of the game, we followed its rules and should find a right route, but why the teacher kept saying we were wrong?
Just then the last boy strode across the squares and the teacher nodded with a smile and applauded, and we all hailed. What he did was to stride across the squares and stand outside them, and it turned out that outside the squares was the right route. The rules of hopscotch have never forbidden us hopping outside the squares, right?
By the end of the game, I was still impressed by the student who jumped out of the squares. Were they only squares that he strode outside? No, what he strode outside was the stereotype, and he broke the shackles of minds! The seemingly small game inspired me a lot: To be a leader of others, you must learn how to lead yourself. Whenever I met difficulties later, I couldn’t help thinking of this, then I would try to stride outside the “square” that tied up me, broke through it, and found the way out.
To lead oneself, it takes courage to break through. To lead a country to sail across historic waves, it needs this country’s perseverance and resolution to “stride outside the squares.” Having been studying and living in China for years, I’ve witnessed that China keeps breaking through technical barriers, upgrading its development guidelines and has made many admirable achievements: from the self-developed ATM “China Chip”, the usage of 5G network, iris and facial recognition technology, to COVID-19 pandemic monitoring, analysis and crowd management and other scenarios with big data and AI technologies; from building human community with a shared future, to implementing the new development guidelines of “innovative, harmonious, green, open and shared” at the new development phase. China has the courage to stride outside many “squares,” break through many barriers and devotedly develop its economy, science, technology and culture, and improve continuously its gross nation power. In my opinion, this is the major principle and wisdom in the game of hopscotch.
Through hopscotch, I’ve met a great and beautiful country with science and technology and depth of thought. What would you do if you were tied up by “squares”?
The story is from "My Beautiful Encounter with China" Essay Competition organized by the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchanges (CSCSE).
