Hong Kong Chinese Language & Literature Bachelor Complete Guide 2026

Chinese Studies — the study of the Chinese language, its classical literature, and its modern cultural production — has been a cornerstone of Hong Kong higher education for almost a century. It still draws thousands of DSE candidates each year into the Faculties of Arts at CUHK, HKU, HKBU, Lingnan, CityU, EdUHK and PolyU, and despite the rise of STEM, it remains one of the most stable subjects to apply for through JUPAS. What has changed dramatically over the past decade is the job market on the other side of the degree: machine translation, Mandarin-as-a-second-language teaching, content marketing, AI language data work, museum and heritage curation, and the global growth of Chinese-language media have all expanded what a Chinese major can do after graduation.

This guide walks through the 2026 JUPAS landscape for Chinese Language & Literature programmes in Hong Kong — programme by programme — so you can decide which university best matches your interests and your DSE profile.

1. Three Different “Identities” of a Chinese Major

Although every Hong Kong university offers something called a “Chinese” programme, the academic identity behind each is quite different. Before ranking your JUPAS choices, separate them into three categories:

Chinese Language and Literature (classical-literary core) — built on linguistics, classical and modern literature, philology, phonology, exegesis. Representative programmes: CUHK JS4031, HKU JS6054 (School of Chinese), HKBU JS2010, Lingnan JS7404.
Chinese with History / Cultural Heritage — pairs Chinese literary training with Chinese history, museum studies and heritage. Representative programme: CityU JS1103 BA Chinese and History.
Applied Chinese / Bilingual / Language Teaching — focuses on classroom pedagogy, teaching Chinese as a second language, bilingual professional writing, and language technology. Representative programmes: EdUHK BEd Chinese (JS8801 / JS8806), PolyU JS3265 Chinese & Bilingual Studies, HKBU Creative & Professional Writing stream under JS2010.

The single most important question to ask yourself before applying is: “Do I want a literary-academic career (research, teaching, publishing) or an applied-language career (teaching Chinese as a second language, professional writing, AI language work, public relations)?” Picking the wrong category leaves four years of coursework feeling off-target.

2. CUHK — JS4031 BA in Chinese Language and Literature

The CUHK Department of Chinese Language and Literature is the “academic flagship” of the field in Hong Kong. Founded in 1963 alongside the university itself, it inherits the humanist tradition of scholars such as Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, and Jao Tsung-i.

JUPAS code: JS4031
Programme length: 4 years
2025 admission: CUHK general requirement is 332A33 (Chinese, English, Mathematics, Citizenship & Social Development, plus two electives). JS4031 uses a weighted 4C+2X formula with Chinese ×2. Recent intakes cluster around 27–29 weighted points (best 5), with the median Chinese score at 5*–5**.
Curriculum: Four study streams — Chinese Linguistics, Classical Chinese Literature, Modern Chinese Literature, and Literary Criticism & Cultural Studies. Required courses include philology, phonology, exegesis, pre-Qin philosophers, Chu Ci, Tang poetry, Song lyrics, Yuan opera, modern fiction, and literary theory; students complete around 60 credits of Chinese department coursework alongside the Capstone Project in year 4.
Faculty research: excavated manuscripts, Dunhuang studies, Song-Ming neo-Confucianism, modern and contemporary Chinese literature, and — newly added — Digital Humanities, applying text databases and machine learning to classical literature.
Exchange opportunities: semester exchanges with Peking University, National Taiwan University, Fudan University, and Kyoto University. The CUHK Bowen Interdisciplinary Programme lets Chinese majors layer philosophy, history, or cultural studies on top.

CUHK’s strength is classical philological training plus academic depth — it is the first choice for students who plan to pursue an MPhil or PhD in Chinese studies.

3. HKU — JS6054 BA, with Chinese Language and Literature as a Major

The HKU School of Chinese traces its history back to the 1927 Department of Chinese — the oldest Chinese department in Hong Kong. Today HKU no longer maintains a separate JUPAS code for Chinese; instead, students apply under the broad JS6054 Bachelor of Arts and declare their major at the end of Year 1.

JUPAS code: JS6054 (Bachelor of Arts)
2025 admission: JS6054 uses 2 × English + Best 4 Subjects, with Chinese weighted ×2 within the best-four. Minimum subject grades 3,3,2,3,3. Recent admission medians sit at 31–33 weighted points, making it one of the more competitive arts entry points.
Available majors: Students inside JS6054 may choose from a dozen majors including Chinese Language and Literature, Chinese History and Culture, Translation, Linguistics, and double-majors such as Buddhist Studies + Modern Chinese Literature.
Curriculum highlights: HKU is known for research-oriented teaching with a cross-linguistic, comparative outlook. Seminars include in-depth study of the Book of Songs, Shiji, and Dream of the Red Chamber, alongside contemporary themes such as Hong Kong literature, Sinophone cinema, and digital humanities.
Arts Elite Scheme: HKU’s Faculty of Arts runs an Elite Scheme for top DSE applicants offering research stipends, overseas exchange grants and small-class tutorials. Chinese is one of the featured majors.

HKU’s edge is research depth, comparative scope, and global brand, but it is the most competitive entry point — once admitted into JS6054, students must perform well in Year 1 to enter their preferred Chinese major.

4. HKBU — JS2010 BA (Joint Entry by Examination)

Hong Kong Baptist University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences uses a “Joint Entry by Examination” (JEE) structure: students enter under JS2010 as BA (Hons) candidates and choose between five majors at the end of Year 1 — Chinese Language and Literature, Creative and Professional Writing, English Language and Literature, Humanities, or Translation.

JUPAS code: JS2010
2025 admission: HKBU general Arts requirement; 4C+2X formula with Chinese ×1.5. Admission medians at 24–26 weighted points. The bar is lower than CUHK or HKU, but a Level 4 in Chinese remains expected.
What HKBU Chinese is known for: modern literature and creative writing. The department is widely regarded as the centre of Hong Kong literature scholarship, with faculty who have authored book-length histories of Hong Kong fiction and poetry. Chinese Language and Literature majors share writing workshops with the Creative & Professional Writing major — a strong setup for students interested in becoming novelists, scriptwriters, or journalists.
Minors and cross-faculty options: students can pair Chinese with Journalism, Film, or Religion & Philosophy for a “text × image × thought” interdisciplinary track.

HKBU suits students who want a literature-focused degree without being locked into classical philology, especially anyone with a creative-writing ambition.

5. Lingnan — JS7404 BA in Chinese

Lingnan’s Department of Chinese carries the university’s liberal arts identity. The department is smaller than CUHK’s or HKU’s, but the student-to-faculty ratio is high and seminars are discussion-heavy.

JUPAS code: JS7404
2025 admission: 4C+2X with Chinese ×2. Admission medians sit at 20–22 weighted points — the most accessible Chinese-major entry point among the eight UGC universities.
Curriculum: Required courses include History of Chinese Literature, Chinese Linguistics and History of Chinese Thought. Lingnan distinguishes itself with electives focused on literature and contemporary society — Hong Kong literature, Sinophone cinema adaptation, literature and the city, literature and image — and collaborates with Cultural Studies on Lingnan Cultural Heritage and Cantonese and Lingnan Culture modules.
Liberal arts requirements: every Lingnan undergraduate completes a Service-Learning course and an international exchange. Chinese majors typically exchange to Taiwan or mainland Chinese universities and contribute to community literature projects (e.g. elderly oral-history programmes).

Lingnan suits students with moderate DSE results who love literature — the best place for a “small-class liberal-arts plus creative writing” combination.

6. CityU — JS1103 BA Chinese and History

CityU does not run a standalone Chinese department; instead, it offers a BA in Chinese and History jointly hosted by the Departments of Chinese & History, with two streams.

JUPAS code: JS1103
2025 admission: 4C+2X formula with both Chinese and History valued. Admission medians at 22–24 weighted points.
Streams:
- Chinese Stream: classical Chinese texts, literary classics, Sinophone cinema and popular culture, Chinese-language creative writing.
- History and Cultural Heritage Stream: modern Chinese history, museum studies, heritage conservation, archaeology.
Career orientation: the programme is openly directed at cultural industries and public history, with internships and curatorial projects at Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, and the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

JS1103 is the right choice for students who want a Chinese-literary degree with a museum / heritage angle — broader than a traditional Chinese department.

7. EdUHK — JS8801 / JS8806 Bachelor of Education in Chinese

The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) is the primary route into the Chinese-teacher profession in Hong Kong.

Main JUPAS codes:
- JS8801 Bachelor of Education (Honours) (Chinese Language) — 5-year secondary-school Chinese teacher track
- JS8806 Bachelor of Education (Honours) (Chinese Language) (Primary) — 5-year primary-school Chinese teacher track
2025 admission: 4C+2X with Chinese at Level 4+ required (Level 5 for some streams). The Chinese-language major also requires applicants to pass a Putonghua Proficiency Test.
Curriculum: 5-year integrated training including pedagogy, children’s/young-adult literature, educational psychology, and teaching practicum. Graduates are eligible for direct Registered Teacher status with the Education Bureau.
Comparison with CUHK / HKU “BA + PGDE” pathway: EdUHK’s 5-year programme produces a registered teacher in one go; doing CUHK or HKU’s BA in Chinese followed by a one-year PGDE also totals 5 years, but you exit with two qualifications (a BA + a PGDE) instead of one BEd.

If your career goal is to teach from Day 1, EdUHK BEd is the most direct path.

8. PolyU — JS3265 BA (Hons) in Chinese and Bilingual Studies

PolyU’s Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies follows an applied-linguistics, bilingual-communication, language-technology model.

JUPAS code: JS3265
2025 admission: 4C+2X; competitive in both Chinese and English. Admission medians at 23–25 weighted points.
Curriculum: Core courses include Chinese Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Introduction to Translation Studies, Professional Writing, and Language and AI. Senior-year electives include Speech and Language Disorders, Cantonese Dialectology, and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language.
Career direction: graduates go into public relations, media, Government Information Services, multinational localisation teams, and increasingly into AI language-data work (LLM evaluators, corpus annotators, prompt engineers).

JS3265 suits students who want Chinese — but with English, AI, and professional writing, not pure classical literature.

9. JUPAS Scoring Reference Table (2025)

JUPAS Code	Programme	Scoring Formula	Chinese Weight	Recent Median
JS4031	CUHK Chinese Language & Literature	Weighted 4C+2X	×2	27–29
JS6054	HKU BA (Chinese major)	2×Eng + Best 4	×2	31–33
JS2010	HKBU BA (JEE)	4C+2X	×1.5	24–26
JS7404	Lingnan BA Chinese	4C+2X	×2	20–22
JS1103	CityU Chinese & History	4C+2X	×1.5	22–24
JS8801	EdUHK BEd (Chinese, Secondary)	4C+2X	×1.5	22–24
JS3265	PolyU Chinese & Bilingual Studies	4C+2X	×1	23–25

Source: 2025 JUPAS Admission Scores documents published by each university. Weights are subject to change as universities adjust scoring under the Citizenship & Social Development subject reform — always confirm with the latest version of each university’s prospectus.

10. What Will You Actually Study? A Four-Year Course Map

Using CUHK and HKU as the reference template, a typical Chinese-major journey looks like this:

Year 1 (foundations): History of Chinese Literature, Introduction to Chinese Linguistics, Philology, Classical Chinese; General Education core.
Year 2 (specialisation): Pre-Qin philosophers, Tang–Song poetry, Ming–Qing fiction, modern essay writing, modern Chinese grammar, exegesis.
Year 3 (research methods): Textual criticism, bibliography, research methodology, capstone proposal; semester exchange options.
Year 4 (capstone): Final-year thesis or creative-writing portfolio; senior electives such as Hong Kong Literature, Film and Literature, or Digital Humanities.

HKBU and Lingnan integrate creative writing and Hong Kong literature much earlier (from Year 2 onward). PolyU layers corpus linguistics and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language on top of the standard backbone.

11. Career Pathways: A Chinese Major Is Not Just a Teaching Degree

The traditional triad — teacher, publishing editor, journalist — still dominates the post-graduation outlook, but the past decade has added several new lanes:

Secondary or primary school Chinese teacher — direct registration through EdUHK BEd, or via BA + PGDE. Government Master Pay Scale starting salary around HK$35,000.
Publishing and editing — Commercial Press, Joint Publishing, Chung Hwa, Oxford, Linking, and a healthy magazine and online-publishing ecosystem.
News and media — newspaper culture desks, scriptwriting for TVB / ViuTV, radio hosting, and an expanding world of cultural YouTube channels and podcasts that hire Chinese majors as researchers and content planners.
Civil service and government PR — Administrative Officer (AO), Information Officer (IO), Executive Officer (EO); strong written Chinese is weighted heavily in selection.
Teaching Chinese as a Second Language — mainland international schools, Taiwan-based Mandarin centres, Southeast Asian Chinese schools, and European or North American universities; certifications such as the International Chinese Language Teacher Certificate are recognised.
AI and language technology — corpus annotation, machine-translation evaluation, RLHF labelling for large language models, and Chinese prompt engineering. PolyU, CityU and HKBU have introduced AI-Chinese coursework to feed this market directly.
Cultural and creative industries — museum curation, heritage conservation, Cantonese opera and traditional-arts promotion, brand copywriting, and advertising.
Law and business via lateral entry — many Chinese majors progress to a JD or a master’s in accounting, leveraging strong written Chinese to enter law firms or Big Four practices.

12. How to Rank Your Six JUPAS Choices

Top DSE scorer (30+ weighted): A — HKU JS6054; B — CUHK JS4031; C — HKBU JS2010; D–F kept as strategic backups (PolyU, Lingnan, EdUHK).
Mid-range scorer (24–28 weighted): A — CUHK JS4031; B — HKBU JS2010; C — CityU JS1103; D — EdUHK JS8801; E — PolyU JS3265; F — Lingnan JS7404.
Future teacher: A — EdUHK JS8801 (secondary) or JS8806 (primary), with a BA Chinese kept as a backup choice and the option of a PGDE later.
Creative-writing applicant: A — HKBU JS2010 (with Creative Writing as the intended major); B — Lingnan JS7404; C — CUHK JS4031.

13. Interviews and Personal Statements: How to Stand Out

CUHK / HKU: occasionally interview shortlisted Chinese applicants. Typical questions: “Your favourite literary work and why”, “Translate a short Classical Chinese passage”, “Correct grammatical errors in this modern Chinese sentence”. Prepare two or three classical and modern works (Shiji, Dream of the Red Chamber, Lu Xun’s Outcry / The True Story of Ah Q, contemporary Hong Kong fiction) and be ready to quote specific passages.
HKBU: the JEE interview tests overall communication; expect to write a short essay on the spot or comment on a newspaper editorial.
EdUHK: interviews focus on teaching passion and Putonghua proficiency — candidates read aloud and deliver a short mock-teaching demo.
Personal Statement: avoid generic openings such as “I have loved Chinese since I was a child”. Lead with specific reading experiences and observations on contemporary Sinophone society — a recent piece of reportage you read, a literary essay you found persuasive, or a community service project tied to language or culture.

14. Conclusion: Chinese Studies Is Not a Fallback — It Is a Profession

Many DSE candidates and their parents still treat Chinese as a “second-choice” subject — what you read if you can’t get into Business or Medicine. That picture is outdated. In today’s Hong Kong, the demand for professional writers, cultural-industry workers, and Mandarin AI trainers is actively growing. The core skills a Chinese degree develops — close reading, precise writing, critical thinking, cross-cultural literacy — are scarce assets in any industry.

Whether you choose CUHK’s academic depth, HKU’s research scope, HKBU’s creative warmth, Lingnan’s liberal-arts intimacy, EdUHK’s teacher-track professionalism, PolyU’s language-tech angle, or CityU’s heritage cross-disciplinary focus, the most important question is which kind of “person walking alongside the Chinese language” you want to become. Identify that, then choose the programme that fits.

To every 2026 JUPAS applicant aiming at Chinese — there is a place for you.

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