The World Is a Classroom
The great voyager Ibn Battuta famously said, ‘Travelling leaves you speechless, and then turns you into a storyteller.’
I have carried that thought with me through my own journeys across some 70 nations. Each new place, each new interaction, has served as a profound lesson, leaving me speechless in the moment, but equipping me with a new story to tell.
Travel, much like technology, presents a beautiful paradox. It makes our world feel smaller, collapsing vast distances into the span of a single flight. Yet, it also reveals just how large the world truly is. Standing in a bustling souk in Marrakech or a quiet temple in Kyoto, you realize that while we are all connected, we often operate on entirely different cultural software. The way people build relationships, conduct business, or define success can be fundamentally different from what we know in Hong Kong.
The most valuable lesson this has taught me is the importance of perspective. In a globally connected economy, the most critical skill is not simply knowing facts, but understanding context. It is the ability to listen, to see the world from another’s point of view, and to appreciate that there are multiple valid ways of reaching a solution. This is an empathy that cannot be learned from a textbook alone.
This raises a crucial question for our city: How do we nurture this global perspective in Hong Kong’s youth? How do we prepare them to not just compete, but to connect and collaborate with people from all over the world?
We begin by building bridges. We can bring the world to Hong Kong by creating platforms—like the art exhibitions we’ve hosted—that feature international voices and celebrate cultural diversity. We can leverage technology to facilitate virtual exchanges, connecting a classroom in Hong Kong with one in Nairobi or São Paulo. And most importantly, we can provide mentorship from those who have navigated these different worlds, sharing not just business acumen, but cultural fluency.
Ultimately, the goal is to empower our next generation to become confident storytellers themselves. We want them to be able to walk into any room, in any city in the world, and not only to represent themselves with pride, but to listen with understanding, to build with empathy, and to share the unique and wonderful story of Hong Kong with the world.
That, to me, is one of Life’s Wonders.
