Classic French literature sets the scene

"French literature accompanied me throughout my youth, as I established my world view and value system step by step. Guy de Maupassant's Ball of Fat, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and Alexandre Dumas' Camille sparked my initial feminist consciousness," Xu adds.

The female writer also recalls how she was invited to write a book review for The Years by Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, when its Chinese version was first published in 2009, and how she was impressed by the power of Ernaux's autobiographical narrative, which the author published at age 68.

Che Lin, French literature professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, introduced how French writers such as Voltaire, Balzac, Camus and Jules Verne gained inspiration from Chinese culture.

For example, Voltaire's play The Orphan of China was adapted from The Orphan of Zhao, a Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) revenge tragedy attributed to Ji Junxiang. The second story of Voltaire's philosophical novella Zadig is also based on a Chinese vernacular story written in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).