Slow life in the teahouse Jiaotong in Chongqing, China / Liming Huang
To complement the Best Doctoral Thesis award and Early Career Researcher prize, the British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS) is pleased to announce the inaugural Undergraduate Essay Contest, on the theme of ‘What ‘China’ means to me.’ Undergraduate students of any nationality and language background currently enrolled in a UK-based university are invited to submit an original essay of 3,000 to 3,500 words.
Potential topics that might be discussed include (but are by no means limited to):
- Your favorite books, movies, tv shows, or celebrities (big and small) and what you have learned from them about ‘China’ and its unique place in the world
- Your rediscovery of Chinese cultural heritage in the UK or histories of Chinese migration to the UK
- Your personal experience learning to speak, read, or write in Chinese (whether Mandarin, Cantonese, or another dialect; Simplified or Traditional characters; IME or calligraphy)
- Your experiences studying abroad, travelling, or working in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan (or elsewhere)
The winning essay will be posted to the BACS website, with a cash prize of £250.
Entries should be submitted to bacsuk@outlook.com. The e-mail subject heading must clearly state that the paper is for the Undergraduate Essay Contest and be accompanied by:
- An enrolment rccord, university email, or letter from the entrant’s home institution confirming their status
- A single sentence statement explaining the use of any text generation or automated editing services, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grammarly etc
All entries will be read by a panel of judges consisting of established scholars in the field. The winner will be selected from all entries by the judges from the pool of papers submitted. The submission deadline is midnight 20 June 2026.