Julie Hsia Chang has published widely and was a very well known writer in Taiwan before emigrating to Australia in the 1980s. Since her arrival in Australia and as a resident of Melbourne, Chang has published several works relating experiences of newcomers to a foreign country. In addition, she has written travel literature and essays on social life in Australia. She has served as chief editor of Chinese Culture in The Diaspora Newsletter.
In her memoir Writing in Australia Julie Hsia Chang writes: '...when our children were still at school, the two young brothers always came home with a never-ending fund of things to talk about at the dinner table ... I listened attentively and wrote it down bit by bit. Later on I wrote a series of special columns, eighty in all, based on my sons' experiences growing up in a foreign country. They were published in Chinese newspapers in Taiwan and the United States. They received an enthusiastic response, and later on the columns were collected into two books, The Adventures of Two Brothers in Australia and The Land Where the Kangaroo Hops.' ( p. 81-82)
She is the mother of Kaiwen Zhang and Andi Zhang.
