Jun 25 2007
Internal strife 内讧
The first president of Renda Alumni in New York, who started it in 1995 with few others. Frank attended Renda fuxiao, the Primary School affiliated with Renda University, and Renda fuzhong (he’s few years ahead of me, so we’ve never met on campus), the Middle/High school of Renda, and Renda itself. He gave a brief speech before handing over the school flag, mentioned that “… we should keep this association simple, aiming at serving the needs of our alumnus, don’t get involved with politics .. pls don’t quarrel like Beida (Beijing Uni) and Qinghua … “ Apparently Beida n Qinghua are in disagreement with themselves so much within each associations, now both are almost paralyzed. It’s a very prudent advice! Hope it didn’t lose on those who were at the BBQ.
Those grass-root organizations are difficult to survive if people have their own agendas, or with little tolerance. In the early 90s, when the first crops of MBAs and attorneys from the Ivies graduated, China was just taking off. So the newly minted found employments in NY formed an association to host delegations from China, making a small profit on it. It didn’t last long, perhaps just a year or so, because they began to quarrel over money, who got what, whose wife also worked, should be paid … such trivia stuff (few of them made out very handsomely in Hong Kong/China later on .. .. one became a Wall Street bank’s CEO in China. They should laugh at themselves fighting at tiny bits money back then now).
The politic part was due to the fact that either Beida or Qinghua Alumni got carried away, invited dissident Wei Jingsheng, which they’re regretting now. The action taken by Wei is absolutely not my point of discussion here, nor my thoughts on dissidents are irrelevant. What were they thinking or trying to accomplish by doing so???
Frank said that he’s done with the Renda alumni … but my gut feeling is that he’ll be involved. He’s rock solid presence. Almost forgot to mention that he’s two cute kids, wtg ex-pres… perhaps I have too much hair, couldn’t get ride of them fast enough … I found bald men are very cool, :).