On March 26, the Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS) announced that EMBA students will enter the 10th Business School Gobi Challenge. “As long as you set off, you can reach it!” was the theme of the poem that PHBSers wrote to express their desire to win.
Organized by CCTV, the Xuan Zang (Chinese: 玄奘) Road International Business School Gobi Challenge has become a recognized cultural event and test of physical endurance for EMBA students from China and global business schools. The trek retraces Monk Xuan Zang’s arduous Tang Dynasty pilgrimage through the Gobi Desert 1,300 year ago. The organizing committee reported that as the challenge is approaching, teams are undergoing intensive training.
The 10th Xuan Zang Cup Gobi Challenge will be held from May22 to 25. This year, teams of EMBA students from 43 international business schools will trekk across 110 kilometers of arid Gobi Desert under extreme weather conditions. On one particularly challenging day, the difference between the high and low temperature was 40℃.
PHBS Dean Hai Wen will also participate in the challenge. On May 19 he and PHBS team members will head off for the competition. Participants are expected to hike 112 kilometers, crossing the Moheyanqi Gobi (Chinese: 莫贺延碛戈壁) on the border between Gansu and Xinjiang challenging their will, intelligence and physical strength. Students from dozens of schools located on mainland China, and from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. will take part in this grueling competition.
To be well-prepared for the challenge, the PHBS EMBA program hired renowned marathon coach Zheng Hui to instruct and organize several field trainings on the east coast of Shenzhen, at Wutong Mountain, and the like. Training took place during Spring Festival and continued at Shuangyue Bay which resembles Gobi in topography. There, the third round of selections took place in a match which is an even stricter test of participants’ endurance and speed. This unusual challenge demands unusual team spirit, and the committee has made full use of the mobile internet platform to promote experience sharing among team members.
Xuan Zang was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator known for his seventeen-year overland journey to India in search of sacred books of Buddhism. The Gobi challenge covers one part of his journey and is aimed at providing participants with an unforgettable experience in a severe environment in order to find inner strength for embracing life’s many challenges.
by Yuxin Zheng
