When a literary encounter with the French produces a little magic in Beijing

Chinese author Di An attends the Chinese-French writers event in Beijing. Photos Provided To China Daily

When Di An and French writer Vincent Hein sit together to talk about their travels and writing, it's a magical time. They met at the fourth China-French Writers Conference in Beijing last week.

The writers come from different backgrounds, are of different genders and from different age groups, but their interaction is extremely harmonious.

A representative voice of China's younger generation, Di An, 33, spent years in France to obtain a master's degree in sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris; Hein, 46, is based in Beijing and studies Chinese "to escape family traditions".

"I was young when I left for France.But without the experience I may not have become a writer," says Di An, the daughter of an established writer couple, Jiang Yun and Li Rui from Shanxi province. Her birth name is LiDi'an.

She believes that learning a foreign language is like learning a new logic, through which she finds a "strangeness in my mind" (the title of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's renowned novel).

She notices that her way of thinking has changed, which spurs her to write.

"To me, learning French is a journey,writing is another, and translating still another," she says, adding that even small things like taking buses in a foreign country are different, and often offer inspiration for her writing.

"I (also) became extremely sensitive to my mother tongue," she says.