To nurture young scholars in Chinese Studies and strengthen the network among young scholars in the field, The Institute of Chinese Studies started to organize the Young Scholars' Forum in Chinese Studies from 2014. The 2015 Young Scholars' Forum in Chinese Studies was co-organized by The Institute of Chinese Studies and The Chinese University of Hong Kong-Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation Asia-Pacific Centre for Chinese Studies (APC). The forum received 305 proposal applications from around the world. After rigorous selection by the organizing committee, 28 applicants were invited to present their papers. The final applicants came from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other regions in Asia, Europe and America. Two-thirds of them came from overseas, reflecting the forum's effort to enhance international communication in Chinese studies. Participants presented and discussed their researches on various topics on disciplines of history, literature, religion, art and thought. Papers on cross regional and comparative studies were especially impressive.

Two participants shared their forum experiences as follow.

Mandy Chan, Ph.D candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania
The forum provides participants with an open platform for engaging in cross-cultural dialogue about issues that are pertinent to Chinese Studies. As a participant whose focus is the archaeology of pre-modern China, I benefited immensely from the variety of papers that offers an encompassing approach to the study of ancient and modern China. However, the larger ramification of the conference can be seen in how it imparts new ways of thinking about the sociocultural dynamics of past societies. Not to mention the forum has provided an excellent opportunity to network within the community and to get updated in field research!

Jiang Linjing, Ph.D from the University of Heidelberg, Lecturer at the Department of German, Fudan University
This Young Scholars' Forum was a very important step in my academic career. As a Germanist, I always want to do comparative literature research from an overall perspective. The paper I contributed this time was a first attempt through a comparison between Carl Schmitt and Lu Xun, although its elaboration was to some extent still quite weak. But the moderator of my panel gave very accurate and penetrative comments, and even a moderator from another panel provided me very meaningful suggestions. After the Forum, I read a lot of recommended literature and made some modifications to the previous paper within a month. The corrected version will be a preliminary research result for my further and deeper investigation of this theme.