Thank you for inviting me to this event, and I feel very honored to be here to share some of my reflections and my remembrance of Ezra. To me, Ezra was and is a mentor. In just two minutes after the email was sent out announcing my appointment as Interim Director of the Fairbank Center, in my email box came Ezra’s email. And he said, “as someone who retired 20 years ago, I have no power and feel no need to be consulted. However, I am absolutely dedicated to the Fairbank Center. And so, if my experience or knowledge are useful to you, my door is always open to you”. And so it has to be. So we organized a meeting to talk about the Fairbank Center and asked Ezra, “What is your wisdom? What would make the center look successful? What does success mean?” He enumerated a number of them. He said, “we have to keep the center lively, lively in scholarship, lively in exchange. We have to assure that the Chinese who come to Harvard feel that they're welcomed, that if there are troubles, they can always come to us and that we have their interests in our heart. Before this, we have to continue to be the bridges to help the Chinese learn more about America, and likewise to help Americans learn more about China”. And finally, he said that during this difficult time, we have to continue to find opportunities in China to collaborate, to keep up with working together, to find the right opportunities. At the end, we agreed that what would count as success is, through collaboration, the people in both countries would benefit, people in the world would benefit.

That conversation reveals to me what is his vision in his heart. It is about the people through which our work is able to bring benefits to. And when he keeps using the word “we”, I just all of a sudden feel that, “oh, there's always someone I can turn to!” It’s the “we” collective that he always thinks in his mind.

And I was pleasantly surprised that he actually attended most of the seminar series that I organized, even though not all of them are in his area. And because we agreed that with COVID, health is a good area for US-China collaboration. And every seminar afterwards, he was sending an email, commenting, complementing, providing advice for what might be next steps, and sometimes he would even sign and say, “With respect”. And when I look at it, I said, how could I ever get a message with Ezra, so accomplished, saying “with respect”? And he went through with me a list of strategies to think about: I need to develop relationships with the leaders at Harvard, but I need to pay special attention to the next generation.

And when Ezra talked about the next generation, there is this fatherly smile in his eyes, that thinking about the future, thinking about the next generation, just makes him happy. Just that's what makes him so joyful.

And he also said that you have to work with your peers. And then he almost went to every single individual that we are aware of to be able to collaborate with. And interestingly, the words, the adjectives, that strike me that he kept using was, he's a good person to work with because he or she “cares”, or he or she has “high moral standing”, or he or she is a “very decent person”. It tells me about who Ezra is: he himself is a very decent person with high moral standing that he aspires to.

About five years ago, many of you know that Ezra set up the Critical Issues for Contemporary China Studies for the Contemporary China Seminar Series. It has been one of the most successful seminar series at the Fairbank Center. And at this time, we are missing Ezra so much because we know but we're feeling very keenly that Ezra’s shoes are very, very difficult to fill. We have to put together a group of at least five to six people to only fill probably what Ezra was able to do himself. But it's a legacy that we’re committed to continue, to carry on and to build on, and to fulfill his vision of improving US-China relations. And that's our duty. I have to say that I have yet to meet someone who is so accomplished as Ezra, so influential, not just through scholarship but also in his diplomacy, and yet so humble, so kind and so human. That's the image that rests in me and in the center, and everyone around us, who will continue to carry on Ezra’s vision in life and in the world.

Thank you very much.