Good day. I bring greetings from our dean, Dr. Robert Alpern, who sends his very best wishes. He is tremendously disappointed not to be here today in Changsha to celebrate the centennial of the Xiangya School of Medicine and our longstanding collaboration in medicine. However, Dean Alpern asked me to share his deep-felt congratulations with all of you.

Dr. Alpern recalls fondly his recent meeting with Dr. Tao Lijian and the delegation that visited Yale in New Haven in 2011. He asked me to convey how impressed he was by the achievements made by your faculty and students, and by how much we have learned from our Chinese colleagues over this long period of friendship.

We are delighted to have been a part of the history of this august institution. We are so proud that, 100 years ago, physicians from Xiangya and from Yale came together to establish the Xiangya School of Medicine.

Xiangya has an impressive past and it has grown enormously since its founding. That the original hospital has become three hospitals, a medical school, and a nursing school, shows how vital your work is to the people of Changsha and the surrounding region. That Yale played a small part in your accomplishments is a very great honor.

In the spirit of Edward Hume, who felt that western doctors had as much to learn from their colleagues in China as they had to teach, we find this to be true in the present day. Many of our faculty and students have been eager to visit Xiangya and to work in partnership with your faculty.

It has been wonderful to see the fruits of collaboration among Drs. Robert Rohrbaugh and Barry Wu from Yale and their counterparts at Xiangya and its affiliates in building a stellar residency training program over the last six years. Likewise we are very proud of the work done by Profs. Kaveh Koshnood and Madelon Baranoski and their collaborators at Xiangya in the realm of research ethics and bioethics. These are but a few examples.I also have been so moved during my visit to learn about the early days of Xiangya,and the sacrifices made by many during its formation and over the years. To bestanding today in the same venue as Mrs. Maude Pettus, the former head nurse at Xiangya during the 1940s—and celebrating 100 years herself!—is an honor I never would have imagined. And then to hear of the bravery of her late husband, the surgeon Dr. Winston Pettus, who died at age 33 while delivering medical supplies during the war, was every bit as remarkable. It is also an honor to meet the grandson of Dr. Edward Hume—Mr. David Freeman and his wife, Dr. Ellen Freeman—who are here today as well.

In closing, let me say how grateful we are at Yale to share such an illustrious history with Xiangya, and to emphasize that while we are thrilled to celebrate the past, we are very much focused on the future. Today is really a commencement of our second century of partnership, and we look forward to new collaborations across the oceans. On behalf of Dean Alpern and all the faculty and students of Yale School of Medicine, we wish Xiangya a very happy birthday—and many happy returns.