BiMBA Mountaineering Team Reaches Peak of Mt. Aotaina
Mar 16-2015
On the fourth day of the lunar new year, seven BiMBA students were on their ascent of Mt. Aotaina.
Whilst Mount Aotaina, situated in the Aba Tibetan Autonomous Region in Sichuan, is only an entry level mountain at 4850m above sea level, aside from me, the majority of the team members had little experience in mountaineering or even outdoor activities.
Mt. Aotaina’s base camp is situated at the foot of the mountain at an altitude of 3700m above sea level. From base camp, an ascent of 1300 meters is needed to reach the mountain peak, then a descent on foot to the valley base to reach the bottom of approximately 1800m. The entire trek needs to be completed within one day. Due to the ascent and wintery conditions, as well as the rocky mountain peak, this climb was more difficult than that of Mt. Siguniang and closer to that of Mt. Haba.
Of the seven BiMBA team members, four successfully made the ascent – PT 2010 student Song Shenglei, PT 2014 student Ma Xinzheng, Wang Zhiwei and myself.
During BiMBA’s Global Leadership course, Dean Professor John Yang emphasized the importance of extreme and endurance activities such as mountaineering and running through the case studies of Sir Ernest Shackleton and The United States Military Academy at West Point.
In addition, Dean Yang once mentioned that a BiMBA alumni is a famous mountaineer and entrepreneur – Mr. Huang Nubo once recommended the mountaineering book “Deng Ding” to his management team. Taking this remark to heart, I found this book and read it during this trek. “Deng Ding” shares the stories of nine industry titans and mountaineers, including experience of Build To Last author, Jim Collins’ climb of the Himalayan mountains.
More importantly, the book describes the link between mountaineering and their entrepreneur spirit. Through mountain climbing, they each gained motivation and experience for the management of their companies.
Why do we climb mountains? George Mallory’s answer, “Because it’s there” is perhaps an over generalization and does not answer the question fully. Each person has his own motivation and answer to this question.
Former Chair of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman wrote in his book Flourish that the happiness gained from a cocktail by the seaside will always be less than that of many days’ mountain climbing to reach the peak. Whilst Aotaina is an entry level mountain, it gave each climber a target to reach the next level. During the climb, we had to completely focus on the next step, endure the chilling cold, never stop and keep going until we reached the top.
The importance of the climb was not the height of the mountain, but rather whether we were able to hear our inner voice. The test of our willpower was not just in reaching the peak, but rather in stretching our own limits.
Author: Peking University National School of Development Part-Time MBA 2014 Class Jin Yi, Head of Legal Department, Taikang Life Insurance co., ltd.
