Six hundred Asian students from 24 Boston-area schools will spend the weekend here for a two-day sports tournament aimed at fostering a cultural link among the amateur athletes.

Sponsored by the Boston-based Intercollegiate Chinese Student Social Committee, the tenth annual tournament will host 74 teams, including three from Harvard, for matches in men's and women's volleyball and men's basketball, to be held in the Indoor Athletic Building.

Teams represent schools as distant as Columbia, Cornell and Brown, as well as institutions across the Charles River About 27 Harvard Students, including several from the graduate schools, will play on Harvard teams.

The tournament reflects the committee's goal to provide a meeting ground for Asian students in different universities to assemble and share cultural interests and backgrounds. Joe Kwangjin Choi, a senior at Boston University and president of the Asian Student Union there, said yesterday.

Choi said the event "brings a lot of contact among Asian college students throughout the Northeast. "Friendships fostered by the contact also encourage the students to strengthen their links of cultural awareness, he added.

Harvard is hosting the event for the first time this year because students from other schools expressed a high interest in attending, Albert Lin '84 said yesterday Harvard's Asian and Chinese clubs have also become more actively involved in the intercollegiate committee's activities, Lin added.

Previous tournaments have taken place at Boston University and other area schools.