Rachel Joyce has a conversation with Chinese writer Liu Zhenyun. [Photo provided to China Daily]

It is a story that represents the pain of losing her father, but it is also a story about a person who tries to find confidence and faith through a journey, she tells popular Chinese author and screenwriter Liu Zhenyun.

"My father passed away while I was writing the novel," she says. "There were many things I did not understand at that time. So, by writing the book, I tried to explore a strange land that I had never been to."

Liu says that the journey in Unlikely Pilgrimage "is not always religious, but sometimes can be an idea; of someone who wants to leave a place one is familiar with."

Liu's own novel Someone to Talk To features a private tutor of a landlord called Laowang, whose youngest daughter is drowned in a vat.

Laowang does not seem sad at the beginning until one day it starts snowing and he suddenly thinks of his daughter.

Consumed by sadness, he and his family leave the landlord's house in Yanjin, saying that they will keep walking west until they get to a place where they do not think of the daughter anymore.

"Then, he restarts his life in Baoji.

"I think this whole process is also a pilgrimage," he says. For both writers, a pilgrimage means searching for and sticking to one's faith so as to achieve inner serenity.

As Joyce says: "Only if we have faith about completing something, can we achieve it. "But in modern societies, people usually lack such faith," she says.

In fast-paced societies, people have to face problems like anxiety and have no patience to wait, or to listen to others. As for Liu, he says: "It is a writer's task to describe common people's anxieties. Nobody wants to listen to ordinary people. So when these people have no one to share their feelings with, it's time for literature to show up."

In The Music Shop, the hero Frank insists on selling only vinyl records, despite the fact that CDs are more popular.

Frank does not want people to listen to music on CDs, but only on vinyl because for him vinyl is a way to communicate, says Joyce.

"If you want to listen to vinyl, you have to maintain it well, and when one side is done, you need to turn it over. So, as a listener, you have to be part of the process," she says.

"It might not be the best way to communicate, but I think we should not give up because if we get everything immediately to some extent we will lose the ability to wait and listen," she says.