The Asia-Pacific Business School Desert Challenge (hereinafter referred to as the Asia-Pacific Business School Competition) is a competitive, experiential and cultural outdoor competition among the MBA schools of top business schools in the Asia-Pacific region. The first competition was held in 2012 in the Tengger Desert of Alxa League, Inner Mongolia, and has been held for 11 consecutive years, with more than 130 participating universities, covering more than 500,000 MBA groups of business schools in the Asia-Pacific region. The team members of each school hiked through the 70-kilometer desert in a team to experience and practice the competition concepts of environmental protection, cooperation, perseverance and responsibility.
The Asia-Pacific Business School Desert Challenge is known as the second classroom of the business school, and has been certified by the world record as the world's largest desert trekking challenge, which greatly enriches the outdoor activities of the business school, builds a communication platform for the business school, walks with the strong, and constantly completes the transcendence and transformation of individuals and teams.
The "Yasha Talks" series of talk shows kicked off, and the previous participating students came here to share their origins and gains with Yasha. In this issue, we walked into the Peking University Development Institute and listened to the stories of Wu Shuo, Luan Qiuman and Yasha, the leaders of the MBA Sha 11 of the Peking University Development Institute!
The desert stretches all the way to the horizon, and at the junction of the yellow sand and the blue sky, there are stretches of sand dunes. The sand swelled, blowing up layers upon layers of fine sand.
In the long yellow sand, small people carry heavy luggage, walking in the desolate and vast desert, rolling up sand stones, stepping on sand pits, every step forward needs courage support. They look bitter and tired, but they are full of strength.
Guest of this issue
Wu Shuo, Luan Qiuman
Leader of MBA Sha 11 of Peking University Development Institute
Luan Qiuman and Wu Shuo, who saw the photos of the sand friends of the Peking University Development Institute participating in the Asian Sand Competition for the first time, were deeply shocked by this indescribable spiritual power with a longing for the desert. With a yearning for the unknown, they embarked on a journey to conquer the desert, supporting each other in the vast desert, like two tenacious red willows, tenacious and upright, never giving up.
01 Walk together with a yearning
In 2019, Luan Qiuman, who worked as a product manager at JD.com, was admitted to the MBA of Peking University Development Institute. The BiMBA Business School of the National Development Institute not only has a distinctive architectural environment, but also keeps up with the trend of the times in academic teaching and research, and is a leader among international business schools.
At the same time, the university often invites internationally renowned economists and even Nobel laureates to share new knowledge, and occasionally sees professors occasionally arguing fiercely because of different academic views, but respecting each other's opinions and discussions. The inclusive academic atmosphere and the exchange of insights from students from different industries, different ages, and even different countries have invisibly expanded the breadth of her knowledge.
Long before entering the school, Luan Qiuman paid attention to the Yasha Competition, which is known as the top competition of the business school, and the first time she saw the photos of the group of teams running neatly and wantonly in the desert, a kind of respect arose from her heart, in the vast desert, they looked so small, but so tenacious. That year, this group of contestants won the honor of runner-up for the Peking University Development Institute, and at the same time, the idea of participating in the Asian Sand Competition also planted a seed in her heart.
Wu Shuo, who works in a pharmaceutical company, was admitted to the BiMBA Business School of Peking University Development Institute in 2020, and has been deeply involved in the professional field for many years, and she is eager to broaden her thinking limitations and break through the cognitive bottleneck. During her time at the university, she actively participated in regular lectures, which brought together the most cutting-edge information in academic, research, and economic fields, which greatly inspired her.
Different ways of meeting, the same fateful choice. Wu Shuo first noticed that the Yasha Race was in the class group's entry documents, and it was a new and challenging thing for her to complete a distance of 70km in the desert in the form of hiking or running. Does she have enough physical strength to walk through the soft desert after a long period of fitness, yoga, and sprinting? This made her more curious about Yashasai. "A small individual looks at the boundless desert, everything is unknown, then go for it!"
The moment you decide to go, you have to try to reach the other side even if you are through thick and thin. At the end of October 2020, in order to prepare for the Sha 11 and ensure the systematic and scientific training of the team members, the Yasha training camp of the National Development Institute was opened. Wu Shuo, who wanted to participate in the Yasha competition and even entered the A team, joined the training without hesitation, and at the same time, Luan Qiuman, who has always been yearning for the Yasha competition, also joined the training camp with the encouragement of the class leader.
In this way, two girls from different fields, different grades, and seemingly little intersection met because of Yasha's fate. At that time, they may not have imagined that they would take on the role of team leader together in the future, and as a result, they would have a close friend with similar interests and hearts, and gain a sincere friendship that could travel together on vacation and practice cello.
In the preparation stage of Sha 10, in the Yasha Reserve A team, except for Wu Shuo, they are all seniors who have graduated or are about to graduate. Due to the close proximity to the residence, the two captains of Sha 10 often take Wu Shuo to run together. In half a year, no matter the scorching sun, snow, wind, rain, fog and bad weather, the two team leaders never missed a single training.
Even if the weather forecast has warned that the weather conditions are not good, every time a team member asks in the group whether the training will continue today, they will always reply: "We are in the wind and rain, what is the weather, we are all here!"
In her opinion, the spirit of Yasha has always been inherited in the National Development Institute. Before choosing to become the new team leader, she knew that there might be many hardships ahead and a lot of unpaid dedication, but recalling the persistence of the previous team leader, she resolutely decided to take on this responsibility.
Infected by Wu Shuo's courageous spirit of responsibility, Luan Qiuman decided to share this heavy responsibility together. Recalling the first time we met in the training camp, this slightly young and good-looking girl left a deep impression on her with her excellent running results, and after that, they ran the 10km test and 30km test together, ran through the Sha10 field together, and checked in the distance of a marathon together.
02 A like-minded team is more valuable than results
From the initial recruitment of the team members to the training of the team members, their efforts are all in the hope that the National Development Institute will achieve better results in the Asian Race Competition, which is crowded with top business schools. At the beginning of the training, the team did not have a systematic training system and no professional coaches, but as there were more and more newcomers, Wu Shuo and Luan Qiuman realized that the progress of the team members needed more targeted help. "Team stickiness needs to have a process of building, everyone is in a different training state, and they will encounter different problems during the run, and we can't make the most professional advice on these issues. Based on the problems that arose, Wu Shuo suggested establishing a connection mechanism to connect old sand friends with novice Xiaobai, so that each member could get the right counseling for himself. So she and Luan Qiuman tried to create a new way of training - the mentoring system.
Each member of the reserve A team is assigned a professionally trained master and a "psychological masseuse", the master with training has a very strong professionalism and running experience, and can customize an exclusive training plan for the apprentice, so that you can ask training-related questions at any time;
What they didn't expect was that after the implementation of the mentoring system, it not only improved the training status of the players, but also greatly enhanced the cohesion of the team. Almost all the team members are "Master fans", no matter when, as long as the team members see the Master, or mention the Master are very happy, here, every team member feels like a friend, the teacher cares for the care.
The new bamboo is higher than the old bamboo branches, and it all depends on the old stem for support. Most of the team members' first long-distance run was accompanied by the master. Every time they check in the group after running, the masters will pay attention to the state of their apprentices, and give feedback from a professional perspective in terms of cadence, heart rate, rhythm, etc., to see if there is still room for improvement in training.
When it comes to the mentoring system, Wu Shuo and Luan Qiuman seem to have endless joy. Among the masters and apprentices, there are also many touching stories. For example, the master-apprentice combination of "Sister Fang" and "Brother Yang", Sister Fang often dances, her body is thin, and she does not have too many muscles. When I first started running, I often had various conditions such as swollen ankles and uncomfortable knees. So Brother Yang made a separate training plan for her: how long to run, how many kilometers, and how to deal with physical conditions...... This program has allowed her to understand her physical condition more and gradually find a training method that suits her.
In a competition, Sister Fang did not play at her due level due to sleep, diet and other reasons, and when she met Brother Yang on the way, she was "educated". With the emotion of not admitting defeat and the encouragement of the master, Sister Fang overtook Brother Yang in the pace in the later competition, and was surprised to find that she could still have such a huge energy.
In addition, another girl in the team known as the "Captain" ran into her master after climbing several large slopes in a row during the race, and after an unusually tired handover. A natural hug, and her exhaustion was swept away. Just like when a person meets someone close to her in the most difficult time, the sense of stability and steadiness in her heart will rise sharply, and this small hug will give her the most firm strength. There are countless clips like this, and the mentoring system not only shortens the distance between the players, but also makes everyone's feelings more durable after experiencing the wind and rain together.
03Grow together in the "second classroom" of the business school
In July 2022, in order to continue to prepare for the Sand 11, Wu Shuo and Luan Qiuman led the team to the desert to carry out field training. Running in the desert has to deal with the resistance of collapse and the possibility of accidents at any time, and some of the team members who usually train well have experienced "Waterloo", while others are more adapted to running in a desert environment. That night, the coach and the players conducted a deep review and realized the gap between imagination and reality, not only did everyone not be negative and depressed, but aroused a higher training morale.
Since the preparation of Sha 11, the training status, training habits and team spirit of the running group have been relatively mature, because the addition of coaches has also formed a relatively complete training system, which has also had a good effect on the promotion of new students. From the very beginning of the inexperience, experienced the gradually improving training period, experienced the emergence of cross-country competitions, and experienced the heavy blow of practical training, the physical injury, recovery, injury, recovery, psychological state is constantly broken, rebuilt, broken again, rebuilt...... This process is the process of the captain and the team members running in, and it is also the process of their quenching, everyone has built a mature psychological defense line and stable emotions, and the Sand 11A team is also on the right track.
Wu Shuo and Luan Qiuman believe that Yasha and the running group are both spontaneous informal organizations, and the team members get together out of hobbies, and the position of mobilizing this organization is to pay attention to the growth of each individual and selfless dedication without utilitarianism, maintain the friendliness within the group, and increase participation.
Different from the obsession with results and rankings at the beginning, Wu Shuo and Luan Qiuman now hope that the team members can complete the competition safely, experience the growth and happiness brought by the event, and draw a successful end to the trip to Sha 11. The game will come to an end, but the camaraderie will never dissipate. After going through all kinds of hardships and experiences together, the relationship between teammates will not end because of the end of the event. “
Although the championship is not made in a year, as long as you continue to maintain this state and influence the students around you through your own influence, you will definitely get more and more good results. As the leader of Sha 10 wrote in his thoughts after the game: Guofa will always strive for the first! Luan Qiuman shared this sentence with his teammates in Sha 11, and drew a steady stream of faith and strength from it with everyone.
The process of forming the organizational structure and division of responsibilities of the SAS11 team is a practical experience, and they put the theoretical knowledge of the business school into practice, truly understand the mystery of management, and also stimulate people's infinite possibilities.
In Wu Shuo and Luan Qiuman's view, network resources and experience are also an indispensable part of business school learning, and Yasha provides assistance for cross-grade and cross-industry exchanges between sand friends, gathering based on interest, without any utilitarianism, and often making the feelings between people more pure. These sincere friendships will be fed back into their lives in different forms or contents, allowing them to see the wider world and have more positive psychological energy.
04 Yasha is a competition, but also a kind of life gesture
In the past two years, Yasha has taken up almost 80% of their spare time and has become an inseparable part of their lives.
Before meeting Yasha, the leisure activities may be checking in food, watching a new movie or shopping, but after participating in Yasha, they will be more willing to enjoy running. They often make appointments with their sand friends to run races, run mountains, or dozens of kilometers of cross-country routes, and many sand friends will choose to commute and run, carrying a cross-country bag, changing clothes, and running a distance of more than ten kilometers is already a very easy thing to do.
Wu Shuo quipped: "This year we are about to go to Belgium to attend the graduation ceremony, and our first reaction is not to go to Europe to buy and buy, but to go around Mont Blanc"! Because of running, because of Yasha, they have made many people who like this sport, and everyone gets together to make life more positive, full of sunshine, and have more fresh experiences in a healthy way.
Sha 10 acquaintance, Sha 11 accompaniment, Yasha will link them more closely, starting from discussing work and team members growth together, gradually sharing hobbies and moods, and slowly becoming good friends who cherish each other.
Last summer, Luan Qiuman and Wu Shuo planted a cello seed together, practiced together in their free time, and strode forward into a new field. They cherish each other's company and hope to pass on this friendship and spirit to the new partners of the National Development Institute. One person can run fast, a group of people can run farther, the Sha 11 teammates of the National Development Institute encourage each other, support each other, turn running into a habit, and interpret the meaning of "Yasha once, Sha friends for a lifetime" with persistence.
Work and life are like a marathon, some people may start ahead, some people are talented, but the road ahead is still very long, no one knows what will happen in the future, as long as you insist on running slowly at your own pace, there will be the possibility of surpassing others.
Packing their bags, Luan Qiuman and Wu Shuo will go to the Sand 11 in the Tengger Desert with their teammates in May.