Business School Gobi Challenge - BiMBA Resumes the Pilgrimage of Hsuan Tsang
Jan 17-2014
Since its inception in 2006, “The Pilgrimage of Hsuan Tsang” – Business School Gobi Challenge has grown to the most valued outdoor extreme challenge and team building event not only for business schools across China but also for business schools internationally. This non-stop hike over three days in the vast Gobi - following the 16 year pilgrimage to India by the 7th century Buddhist monk Hsuan Tsang- is not only a great challenge for individual will and stamina but also tests team spirit and strategy.
BiMBA was not only an important early participant of the Pilgrimage of Hsuan Tsang, but also an early adopter of outdoor team building events within business schools. As early as 2003, BiMBA held its first team building exercise in the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia – this has now become a tradition for BiMBA. It has become a model for China’s business schools, with its features of “outdoor survival, love of nature, challenge towards the extreme, and team building”.
In the context of an expanding BiMBA students and alumni team and growing experience for outdoor team building, we decided to return to the Gobi and trek over 110 km in the desert with elevation of 1,500 m and temperature difference of 40 degrees, in order to present the spirit of BiMBA to business schools all over China and purify our minds at the grand opening of the 9th “The Pilgrimage of Hsuan Tsang” Business School Gobi Challenge.
Li Pan, 2012 EMBA alumnus and captain of the Gobi Challenge team said that the “Pilgrimage of Hsuan Tsang” could not be reproduced exactly, but the team still faced considerable challenges. As BiMBA Professor Zhang Li said, what the Gobi Challenge tested was one’s spirit. With 15 years’ experience, BiMBA’s alumni team were united and more than capable of taking on this challenge.
