Yenching Academy Graduate Student Union Announces Its Logo and Motto

The Executive Committee of the Graduate Student Union (GSU) of the Yenching Academy of Peking University is happy to announce its logo and motto for the inaugural GSU.

After voting on student submissions of logos and mottos, the Graduate Student Union now has an official logo and motto.

The motto is United Through Our Global Diversity, which was submitted by Anastasiia Ilina (2015 cohort). The Chinese translation for the motto is 谦谦君子，和而不同, which was made by Zhenxing (Bruce) Chen (2015 cohort). The Chinese motto comes from《论语》Analects，which means "a man or woman of dignity keeps harmony but seeks no uniformity". It reflects the intrinsic nature of the English motto and the spirit and characteristics of Yenching scholars and the Yenching Academy.

The logo is shown below, which was submitted by Maithe van Luijk (2016 cohort).

The designer, Maithe, explains her inspiration of the logo: "The aim of the GSU is to build bridges, most importantly, to build a bridge between the students and the university. This movement towards the office, as well as to PKU, is symbolised by a swallow flying towards the pagoda. The swallow was chosen to represent the YCA students, not only because of its character (燕), but also because swallows by nature are social birds. More importantly, though, just like the Yenching scholars, they can be found all over the world. The pagoda then represents the university, the 京, because, well - isn't that the first thing you picture when you think about BeiDa? With the swallows flying movement towards the pagoda, therefore, we wish to represent the Yenching scholars' movement towards the office and the university, aiming for a close cooperation and tight community."

We also would like to express our gratitude to all of those people who have submitted their logos and mottos and to the scholars who participated in the voting on the submissions.

Chen Zhenxing (Bruce)

Vice President of Graduate Student Union

Executive Committee of Graduate Student Union of Yenching Academy

Cody Abbey, Chen Zhenxing (Bruce), Ani Grigoryan, Benjamin Griffin, Fu Duanlin (Cathy), Yang Tian (Catherine)