When South African people talk about China, they are usually discussing delicious Chinese cuisine, tradition and history, a developing economy, or even famous kungfu stars. However, Chinese literature is a topic rarely included, as South African travel writer Shile Khumalo admits - most South Africans, even writers like himself, have never been exposed to Chinese literature throughout their entire life.

Khumalo, together with four writers who represent the South African literary circle, embarked on an ice-breaking journey to China this August, seeking potential cooperation between the Chinese and South African literary world.

At the invitation of the Chinese Writers Association (CWA), the five South African writers spent about a week in Beijing and Tianjin where they met their Chinese counterparts and discussed ideas during seminars and meetings.

"The discussion was about the state of writing and publishing in South Africa and China, and how the two countries can cooperate to further develop literature in a mutual and beneficial way," said Andries Walter Oliphant, professor in theory of literature at the University of South Africa.

According to Oliphant, the writers from China and South Africa worked together on the proposal of translating literature into each other's languages, and publishing young South African writers' work in journals in China. Furthermore, South Africa will be the focal nation of the 2015 Beijing International Book Fair, which provides a broad platform for the cooperation and sharing of language and literature.

"Presently, there's a growing Chinese community in South Africa, so we also want to emphasize that aspect in South African culture in the relationship based on the economic partnership among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries," he said.

This year's visit was also about members of the CWA meeting South African "When we grew up, all the icons in writing were people like Shakespeare and people who no longer exist. But now there are people [alive] who are represented in that museum, writers they didn't have a chance to meet last year, when a five-member delegation of Chinese writers paid a visit to South Africa. During their stay, the Chinese writers visited famous cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town, and most of them were lavished with praise for the beauty of their country and its history, said Oliphant. This year, the South African writers also drew inspiration from their tour around China's capital city.

Bathandwa Mcuba, the author of Creative Culture: The Heart and Soul of Africa, admitted that the most inspirational place for her is the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. "When we grew up, all the icons in writing were people like Shakespeare and people who no longer exist. But now there are people [alive] who are represented in that museum, which means that there is the possibility of us being read by the vast majority while we are still alive. To be able to have a conversation with a living writer is very important."

The writers said that their visit to historical sites such as the Forbidden City and the Great Wall also offered a good education in Chinese history from which they could draw similarities with South Africa's history.

"Now we are celebrating our 20th year of democracy. And we are coming up with this new identity, an identity of more unity that has been dreamed," said Primrose Mrwebi. "Hence [in literary circle] you can now get this new breed of talent, composed of various styles and values that have been added."

More comments from South African writers about their country's literature, its current trends and development:

Bathandwa Mcuba

At the moment, there are a lot of young South Africans who are writing novels, because one of the major publishing houses has opened a whole new opportunity for people and new stories to emerge. So we are, at this moment, experiencing a lot of new styles of voices by a large collection of South African languages and dialects that you can pick up within the stories. This is very exciting because we are coming from an era of being deprived of this kind of literature, especially as in the former educational system in South Africa we always learnt about authors who were not South African. And if they were South African, they were very few and astonishingly academic. They are completely different from the way we relate as young people in South Africa. So this is an exciting time for South African voices to emerge. We have new playwrights coming up as well - writing new plays and drawing inspiration from older people who reminisce about their past. Therefore we have a variety of genres that make new voices become confident that our stories are worth hearing.

Shile Khumalo

Among other developments is the fact that you can imagine pre-1994; if you are a writer, more often than not, you would be writing about politics because that's the focus point. But now you can write about anything you want. Our constitution is among the fairest in the world and that gives us a platform so that whatever idea you have, nobody sitting in one office somewhere is going to say, "No that's taboo, you cannot talk about that." So we have the right to write about anything - not only novels or fiction, but poetry as well. The second thing is that we can also travel. I'm a travel writer, and most of my travels are based in Africa. South Africa is not isolated like it was before. We are now able to travel freely throughout the continent. That's why somebody like me can do the things that I have done.