Ms Tseng Suzen, Assistant Director of the Education Division began the information session at SOAS with a PowerPoint presentation about the Huayu Enrichment Scholarships and the Taiwan Scholarships and how to apply for them. Ms Chen Ya-hui, Deputy Director of the Administration Division, then provided details of the MOFA Taiwan Fellowship programme. She was followed by Mr Alex Huang, Deputy Director of the Public Affairs Division, who talked about the Youth Mobility Scheme.

Senior academic staff from the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies who were also present then shared their own experiences of postgraduate research in Taiwan and conducted a Q&A session, and hand-outs with information about the various funding opportunities and ‘Study in Taiwan’ brochures were distributed. As in previous years, the occasion proved extremely successful, with over thirty people from SOAS and further afield attending.

Tseng Suzen and Chen Ya-hui gave similar presentations at the University of Nottingham a couple of weeks later for a smaller but targeted group of Chinese Studies students. A special feature of the session was a Skype conversation with Arzhia Habibi, a former student of the university who described life in Taiwan from the perspective of a scholarship student. Arzhia was awarded a Huayu Enrichment Scholarship and studied Mandarin at National Chengchi University for six months, and she’s now studying for a master’s degree at the same university, as a Taiwan Scholarship recipient. So she was highly qualified to answer any questions and encourage the students from her former university to study in Taiwan!