SCU EMBA Team Nabs Four Awards at 13th Gobi Desert Challenge

Soochow University’s EMBA students and alumni just completed a victorious journey at the 13^th Gobi Desert Challenge by winning four awards. Held from May 2^nd to 5^th, this arduous competition was the biggest running race among top business schools in the Chinese world, attracting around 3000 students of 65 teams from 48 schools, who needed to cross the Gobi Desert in four days and three nights.

Under the guidance of Dean of School of Business Tsu-Tan Fu and Associate Dean Chung-Tzer Liu, and led by Yan-Wei Huang (admitted in 2014) and Wen-Yin Chang (admitted in 2012), Soochow’s 13^th Gobi Desert Challenge team won Shackleton Award, which was granted to those teams with all members finished the entire race, Endeavor Award, Best Popularity Award, and Best Team Manner Award, showing the true colors of Soochow University.

Eighteen contestants of Team A and C representing Soochow finished the 31-kilometer one-day challenge, trekking eight hours under the scorching sun in the desert while stopping to help one fellow participant who was having a heart seizure. In the following three days, Team A continued traversing various unfriendly landforms such as rock desert, gravel desert, camelthorns and Yardang, and overcame the dreadful and endless wind along the way.

Finally, all the SCU team members arrived at the finish line by the noon of May 5^th, bowing to the desert trail they just trekked through and yelling: “We start together and arrive together!” The organizing committee, competitors from other universities, and the press all paid tribute to the SCU team, and highly approved its spirit of doing everything as a team.

The Gobi Desert Challenge is held annually on the border between Gansu Province and Xinjiang, China, where 1,300 years ago the Chinese Buddhist Xuang Zang passed through to the West. During the four-day, 116-kilometer race, the temperature changes drastically from day to night in the desert, posing a huge mental and physical challenge for the contestants.