中国代表团参加亚洲科学营

This year's Asian Science Camp, which runs from August 26th to the 30th in Jerusalem, has attracted 30 outstanding Chinese students and their tutors from prestigious educational institutions such as Peking and Tsinghua universities, making the Chinese team the largest student delegation, except for the Israeli one.

A total of 220 students and teachers from more than 20 Asian countries and regions will participate in the science camp, during which some Nobel laureates, including Professor Yuan-Tseh Lee, the 1986 Nobel Laureate in chemistry, and Robert John Aumann, an Israeli-American mathematician who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2005, are scheduled to give lecturers.

Yu Boya, a sophomore at Tsinghua University who is majoring in mathematics, says he values this great opportunity.

"I will be able to talk directly to and learn from the participating top-class scientists. Meanwhile, since the majority of participants are as young as I am, I will be more than happy to share ideas with them."

The Chinese delegation also comprises six very young middle-school students. 17-year old Xing Yile, a student at Shanghai's Gezhi Senior High School, is one of the youngest members.

Xing says the tour to Israel will not be her first experience traveling abroad as she has been to the U.S. and France. She also says she won strong support from her parents to attend the camp given the program's focus on mathematics.

"My parents supported my decision to participate in the Asian Science Camp in Israel since they know I show a strong interest in the sciences, particularly physics. I hope I can attain more knowledge through the trip. Meanwhile, I am also eager to learn innovative ideas as well as the critical points of view of these scholars."

The first Asian Science Camp was held in Taipei in 2007. But participants from the Chinese mainland only joined the camp twice in 2009 in Japan and in 2010 in India.

Yu Lina, who led the Chinese delegation during both of the previous camp tours on behalf of the organizer, China Education Association for International Exchange, says high school students constituted two-thirds of the Chinese delegation at the camp in 2009, and college students the remainder. Nevertheless, she says, all the young minds were motivated by their participation in the Asian Science Camp.

"Some of the lecturers had elaborated on their life experiences, including how they cultivated an enthusiasm in science and therefore grew up to be scientists, which I think is important to guide and enlighten students, particularly the Chinese students, since few of them began to study purely out of their own natural desire to learn."

This year's camp offers a rich variety of activities, including lectures, group discussions, laboratory tours, and a creativity poster competition. During the competition, all the student participants will be encouraged to write their ideas on a poster, which will then be judged by an evaluation committee.

The winners will give five-minute oral presentations about their ideas. Certain prizes will be awarded to the finalists at the closing ceremony.

Li Xudong, Deputy Director of the association's Department of Cooperation and Development, believes these activities not only broaden students' professional knowledge, but also build up their team spirit during the many exchanges they have with others from different nations.

"There will be good exchanges among the students, who are expected to pool their efforts into the establishment of the future platform for scientific research to motivate their pursuit of scientific careers."

For CRI, I'm Wei Tong.