Guanqun Cao’s Blog

Legend of a Wolf

2021-10-30T16:52:16+02:00

I spent the last few evenings watching a documentary TV series called “Returning to the Wolf Pack” (重返狼群), and felt some real sentiments about this show. It is a real story that a 20-year-old Chinese girl in Sichuan province saved a wolf puppy, helped it to find and return to its pack, and protected them from poaching in Zoigê Marsh over the last ten years. Fortunately, she and her boy friend recorded the story using their mobile phones and DV recorders, and the entire documentary is based on the 1700-hour video.

If you are interested, you could find some materials by following the links below, and let me talk more about the story and my feelings after watching the TV series in the blog.

The cover of the book. (Original picture from Baidu Baike)

Trailer on Youtube
Books on JD.com

Plot

In April 2010, a couple of leading wolves were hunted down by the shepherds, and their pack of puppies were left in the paire. Weiyi (Weibo), a young painter who showed a great interest in wolves while crafting her nature paintings in Zoigê Marsh, found the only surving puppy in the pack and brought it back to Chengdu (the capital city of Sichuan province). The little puppy named “Green” might be the first wolf that grew up in the city and learned its survival skills from TV. It also learned how to catch fishes in the pool, eat eggs and interact with humans. Weiyi brought Green up until 2 months with her pet dog until the puppy was too big to continue its urban life, so she and her boyfriend Yifeng decided to bring the wolf to the prairie where it was born.

The wolf puppy when saved from the prairie. (Original photo from the book 重返狼群第一部.)

They firstly took Green to a ranch where Tibetan Mastiffs were kept, hoping the little wolf would learn hunting and social skills with other animals. Though much smaller in size, Green used its wisdom to earn a place amoung the dogs and learned how to hunt Plateau pika. They built a small house in the mountains where wolves were frequently witnessed. The human couple and wolf spent the following half year through the harsh winter in the prairie, and were determined to find the relatives of Green. While not accepted and hurt by the wolf pack at first, Green eventually returned to its birthplace and joined the wolves in the mountain.

The story did not end when Green returned. Weiyi and Yifeng were often warned of Green being captured by poachers, and were increasingly concerned about the living condition of the wolves. They rescued several wolf puppies several years later, but failed to protect some of them from the poachers. Later that year, the wolf “parents” found out Green had become the leader of the pack, mated with a female wolf, and two of the puppies were his children. Green was trying to meet its “mother” while too much conflicts had happened against human. In 2020, Weiyi successfully established a reserve for wild wolves in Zoigê Marsh. She went back to the prairie and wanted to see his “son” again. Though the hope is slim, she recognized Green which was already a old wolf. They met in tears and Green still holded the bandage used to cover the wounds of his saved child.

Wolf

Green with his "mother" Weiyi. (Original photo from Baidu Baike)

(Here below, I would address Green as he/him.)

Traditionally, when we want to describe a wolf, several words would immediately come into our mind including cruel, greedy, cunning and rapacious. While in this TV series, Weiyi and Yifeng showed us the life of a real wolf. Green was brave enough to fight against much bigger Tibentan Mastiffs. By digging a hole underground which could only accomondate him, he waited for the right time to launch the attack when the dogs were tired and finally won a place amoung then. Green was faithful in his pack. When a dog got hurt, he would be the one to keep its company and let it calm. When his wolf “mother” was seriously sick, Green showed his great sorrow, and would hand over his saved food as being able to eat means getting better to him. When Weiyi fell down and hurt her leg in the river, Green showed his wisdom by leading a horse to her so as to carry her back to the house. He also was ver smart to use a window screen torn from the house as a net to catch fishs in the river. When short of food in the prairie, he was loyal to his “parents” and gave away his preys.

Green

Green the wolf. (Original photo from Weiyi's Weibo)

Green is a legend. He would never be controlled by a leash, and follow the lead. “Setting him free” is a common saying by Weiyi. Green will never be domesticated and accepted in the human society. A wolf is too dangerous for the human and vice versa. He is a wolf and will never be converted to a dog, though his barks had a strong dog accent. Green should return to the grassland and his wolf pack, and that is the place where he belongs to. Weiyi communicated to the wolf with a special howl adapted from a song called Legend, and eventually Green became a legend.

Green keeps the prairie green. The name of Green comes from the Grimms’ fairy tale. Weiyi want to use the wolf story in that book to describe her wolf. Green is also the color of the grassland. Zoigê Marsh is getting desertificated due to the over population of goats and pikas partially resulted from the scarcity of wolves. Weiyi knows the only way to protect Green is provide him a safe land without poaching. Finally, a reserve has been set up and the protection of wolves will also contribute to the healthy ecosystem.

Last Note

This blog is written for my family in China. I hope the pandemic around the world would fade away sooner and the restriction will eased in China, so that I can meet them.

Nice Mentoring Experience

2021-05-13T22:18:13+02:00

Today is Ascension day in Sweden, and it seems like a good time to elevate my spirit a bit to start my blog. I’ve recently participate in the Tampere University Doctoral Student Mentoring Program 2021, and found it really inspiring and pleasant. Here follows my experience and what I learned in this program.

What is this program about?

The program is aimed at graduating PhD students at Tampere University for their career advancement, continuous professional growth and network expansion. Mentors were found around the globe, who are experienced professionals in either the academia (namely professors and researchers at different Europeans universities), or successful companies. I found the advertisement on Linkedin and felt delighted to be accepted to share my experience, competence and ideas with all participants. Mentors and mentees are matched based on their areas of competence and professional interest, and most of us are organized in pairs.

Overall, the program is well organized by the HRs from our university with an orientation attended by mentors and mentees separately at the beginning of February, a group session by sharing knowledge and gains when running half way through in April, and we will finalize the program on the first day of June. Mentors were provided with essential coaching tips during the orientation and knowledge sharing in the mid-term meetings, and group sessions were intended to find and solve common questions from the mentees. We met the mentees (virtually on Zoom) in another meeting after the orientation, and pair meetings were planned by the individuals. Generally speaking, 2-3 pair meetings were held in each half of the program.

The mentoring process is illustrated in the picture.

How does it work in my mentoring sessions?

To answer this question, I need to firstly explain what motivates me to join this program. Back in 2019, I saw a video posted by a former colleague in the same department at Tampere University in which she described her struggles in job hunting and how she received some help from an professional agency specifically for PhDs. It suddently stroke me about how much efforts and frustration I had when trying to get out of the “academic bubble” one year earlier. I simply felt that something should be done to help PhD students to improve the situation, especially for my university in Tampere.

I believe it is important to share my motives with all the participants in the program when it started, and it helped to develop the psychological safety with my mentee in our first pair meeting. Let me expand a bit about psychological safety. I increasingly find it a critical factor in our work life which affects people’s behaviour. This word is rather broad which covers feelings originated from physically safe, job security and trust. Simply put, it’s getting harder to feel safe and trust people in this complex society. Feeling safe psychologically is so delicate that it may take weeks or months to build up, and can still be easily broken between parties due to conflict of interest or even cultural/racial differences. However without it, it is almost impossible to work together, cultivate creativity and improve.

My mentee and I agreed to have bi-weekly meetings, and as usual, the first meeting was about getting to know each other and building trust. Mutual understanding was developed by clarifying each other’s role, asking and answering questions, and an emphasize on respect and protection of personal information. We quickly found some common people we know in the university and I felt grateful that the level of trust grew quickly in the first few meetings.

Setting goals and action plans had followed in the next meeting. The action plan was continuously updated when I started to know better about my mentee and help her identify her competence and gaps to the job market. My mentee is a bright and talented young lady with strong data analytics skills in the finance context. She has a clear goal in her mind and my role is mostly about creating the fomality of mentoring sessions and listening with some guidance on competence development. In total, we had 4 meetings on competence development. Since the sessions are driven by the questions from the mentees and I understand that she is a high achiever, our approach is mainly exchanging opinions about the references (a curated list of links on job ads, general career advice, interview tips, advices for data science and engineeing and some relevant forums) which I found helpful for her professional development.

Now, the program is drawing close to the end. We have finished the topic of competence development in our pair meetings, which we kept reviewing our actions and discussed about what skills should be continuously enhanced for the job market. We also tried to match our competence to the target companies. A clinic session was also held to address how to develop professional skills. We touched upon a range of topics including networking at pandemic times, CV polish, transferrable skills and business acumen. Moreover, we had a meeting about personal values and ambitions, and agreed that technology for the common good is what we are aspired for. :-) Meanwhile, challenging tasks and pleasant atmosphere are also important in our working life.

What did I learn?

It has been a while since I finished my PhD, and when I look back, there are several skills I could have strengthened during that period. For example, communication skills are one of them. Like a mentor from India said in our group session, negotiation and conflict management is also becoming important in the business world. Doing a PhD in Finland is extremely good for being focused and doing indenpendent work in the quiet environment. But communication and being collaborative is essential when working outside the academic bubble. Another skill I really valued in the process is to be a good listener and learn to intervene at a good time. It feels like a driving instructor at a latter stage when sitting besides the student driver. To sum it up, these interpersonal skills are going to be my focus for development in the future. Here below, I would also like to show a set of transferrable skills which should be possessed as a PhD student.

A picture showcases Eurodoc Report on ‘Transferable Skills and Competences.

My other reflection is about personal branding and core competence, which I gradually understand its important with an increase of my work experience. Though sitting in a large corporation and bombarded by the word “roadmap”, I have realized the company structure has become agile and flat. It pays emphasis on the capability of a team and for an individual it relates to the career identity and fulfillment, which is a new paradigm for continuous development to achieve a personal career goal and value. On the other hand, capitalizing the talent is equally crucial. For me, I believe that it’s time to strengthen my confidence and seek opportunities in developing my talent and aspiration in Edge AI.

A chart of new set of learning priorities is presented. The source of the image is from Forbes article "Human Work: Learn Stuff Computers Can't Do."

Final thoughts

One thing I feel particularly happy is that I gradually guided my mentee from job hunting as an urgent issue to the long-term career advancement. We also talked about OKR as a tool for personal development. There will still be one more pair meeting and the final group meeting, and I really look forward to them. This program is a nice setup for the PhD graduates to get prepared for the job market, and I hope it will continue to evolve in the coming years. Though the pandemic impedes people gather together and have spontaneous interactions, more mentors around the globe are able to join to share their experience and expertise. It is a wonderful idea and worked well! Personally, I was trained to be an engineer in the Finnish doctoral program, and understand the craftmanship and sisu spirit of Finnish education. Hopefully it will be integrated with a business acumen to match with the future market.