'Antipodean China is a collection of essays drawn from a series of encounters between Australian and Chinese writers, which took place in China and Australia over a period of almost ten years, from 2011. The engagement between the writers could be defensive, especially given the need to depend on translators, but as each spoke about the places important to them, their influences and the literary forms in which they wrote, resemblances between them emerged, and the different perspectives contributed to a sense of common understanding, about literature, and about the role of the writer in society. In some cases the communication was even stronger, as when the Tibetan author A Lai speaks knowingly about Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria, and the two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mo Yan and J.M. Coetzee, discuss what the Nobel meant for each of them.
'The collection also includes writing by some of the best Chinese and Australian writers: novelists Brian Castro, Gail Jones, Julia Leigh, Liu Zhengyun, Sheng Keyi and Xu Xiaobin, poets Kate Fagan, Ouyang Yu, Xi Chuan and Zheng Xiaoqiong, and translators Eric Abrahamsen, Li Yao and John Minford.
'In the current situation of hostility and suspicion between the two countries, this collection presents what, in retrospect, may seem to have been an idyllic moment of communication and trust.' (Publication summary)
'Antipodean China was born from a decade of cross-cultural literary exchange between the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and the Chinese Writers’ Association. It features writings from a wide spectrum of literary figures including writers, poets, translators, and critics, who positively engage with issues of difference in the cross-hemispherical other while envisioning connections between the two countries from a literary perspective. This is embodied in the multi-chapter dialogue between Alexis Wright and the Tibetan writer Alai, which re-imagines the parameters of nation and locality in literary writings.' (Introduction)
'Australia and China: the two terms are so fluid, so contested, yet inescapably denotative – the China of the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the diaspora? The Australia that does not exist? Antipodean China, born of intercultural dialogue and exchange, goes against the typical hubris of the global north. Despite enjoying the freedom, power and privilege to learn from other cultures at its cosmopolitan leisure, Australia can often barely be bothered to understand one – whereas the global south, by necessity, must learn about northern cultures alongside its own (and often many others besides). In its inherent concern for this conundrum – and its vanishingly rare appreciation for issues of cultural essentialism and syncretism – Antipodean China practically sells itself.' (Introduction)
'Australia and China: the two terms are so fluid, so contested, yet inescapably denotative – the China of the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the diaspora? The Australia that does not exist? Antipodean China, born of intercultural dialogue and exchange, goes against the typical hubris of the global north. Despite enjoying the freedom, power and privilege to learn from other cultures at its cosmopolitan leisure, Australia can often barely be bothered to understand one – whereas the global south, by necessity, must learn about northern cultures alongside its own (and often many others besides). In its inherent concern for this conundrum – and its vanishingly rare appreciation for issues of cultural essentialism and syncretism – Antipodean China practically sells itself.' (Introduction)
'Antipodean China was born from a decade of cross-cultural literary exchange between the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and the Chinese Writers’ Association. It features writings from a wide spectrum of literary figures including writers, poets, translators, and critics, who positively engage with issues of difference in the cross-hemispherical other while envisioning connections between the two countries from a literary perspective. This is embodied in the multi-chapter dialogue between Alexis Wright and the Tibetan writer Alai, which re-imagines the parameters of nation and locality in literary writings.' (Introduction)
