Books being showcased at the Australian embassy in Beijing during the 12th Australian Writers Week.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Australian literature has become more known to Chinese people in recent years. To further promote Australian literature in China, the 12th Australian Writers Week was held from March 20 to 27.

The Australian embassy in Beijing and consulate generals in Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, among others, organized a series of activities in their respective cities with the participation of four Australian writers: best-selling author Graeme Simsion, short novel writer Julie Koh, children's author Morris Gleitzman and nonfiction writer Richard Fidler.

Australian Ambassador to China Jan Adams says, "Many famous writers who represent the variety of modern Australian literature gathered for this year's writers week. They shared Australian stories so that Chinese people could better know modern Australia, and the writers, in turn, could better understand Chinese literature."

Three of the four writers quit their original jobs and turned to a career in writing. Koh is no exception. She studied politics and law at the University of Sydney, before leaving a career in corporate law to pursue writing.

"I knew I could be a good lawyer, but I thought I could become an even better writer," she says.

She wanted to write an "ambitious" long novel at the very beginning, but discovered at the time that her writing skills could not give full play to her ideas. Therefore, she wrote some short stories to improve her writing first, but then her short stories were published as a collection and won her a literary prize.

Set in Australia, her stories feature rich imagination, oddness, thrills and a sense of dark satire. For example, in one story she depicts a girl with a third eye in her belly, through which she can see gods and ghosts. The other is about a fleet of ice cream vans that go around Sydney selling ice cream that have a 50 percent of chance of killing the buyer.

Koh is the only author among the four who has some blood relationship with China. She was born in Sydney to Chinese-Malaysian parents and her grandparents moved from East China's Fujian province to Malaysia. Although she cannot speak Chinese, except for some greetings, she has still heard some stories from her Chinese family.

The blood connection has also influenced her writing. "I don't write what is stereotypically expected of migrant literature, but I still write from the perspective of someone who is between cultures, or an outsider, commenting on the culture which I'm in."

TV hostess Yang Lan (left) and Australian Ambassador to China Jan Adams attend a ceremony marking the start of Australian Writers Week at the Australian embassy in Beijing on March 20.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Koh has also read some Chinese literature. From her perspective, some Chinese writers' realistic work gives her the impression that China is a country that experiences, or has experienced, great extremes - as a place of not only great opportunity and wealth, but also of poverty and struggle. Compared to Chinese literature, many Australian fiction writers come from the middle class, so they often write about the Australian landscape, or take a micro-realist approach that focuses on small changes in relationships between characters.

Simsion's The Rosie Project was recommended by Bill Gates, and boasts international sales in excess of 3.5 million copies. The novel follows genetics professor, Don Tillman, who devises a questionnaire to assess the suitability of his potential female partners. Everything changes for him, however, when he meets Rosie, who does not fit many of his criteria, but to whom he is strangely drawn.

Gleitzman is the current Australian Children's Laureate.

"I usually write stories about young people who are faced with huge challenges in their life so that they have to go on a scary journey. They have to develop a variety of personal qualities during the journey, but it turns out to be a very important experience in their life," says Gleitzman.

Fidler is a well-known presenter on ABC Radio. He also publishes books that combine history and traveling. He is quite interested in history and always feels "thrilled" to touch the ancient world. He says getting the opportunity to visit the Forbidden City "electrified" him.

TV hostess Yang Lan was named an "ambassador of Australian literature" in 2019 and attended the ceremony marking the start of Australian Writers Week, which was held at the Australian embassy in Beijing on the evening of March 20.

"I always encourage my community to expand their horizons so that they will understand themselves and the world better, and become more tolerant, understanding and appreciative of each other," says Yang.