I was I was recently asked to join Down: Indie Rock in the PRC director Andrew Field for a post-screening Q&A session at the North by Northeast (NXNE) Festival in Toronto. The film follows Field’s explorations through the music scene in 2007. The host of the afternoon, the festival’s film programmer, used the word “revelatory” on several occasions to describe the impact Field’s film had on him and could have on potential audiences. That’s definitely something I was ready for: The number one reaction I get when I tell people that I’ve written a book on Chinese rock music is confusion. That there might be such a thing is not something that crosses your average mind. And let me be clear: I’m not surprised that this is the case.

But every so often, I get thrown for a loop when I experience this disconnect.

Fate played a role in ensuring that Aboriginal people would begin to populate the paintings of Chinese artist Zhou Xiaoping soon after he arrived in Australia in September 1988, and that Aboriginal people would remain the main subject of his continuing explorations in art.

In China he frequently camped to paint at various sites on Huangshan, a mountain range in southern Anhui province that is famous for its bizarre rock formations. On one occasion an Australian tourist stopped to admire his work, and engaged him in conversation. He made a gift of some of his works to the tourist, and before long he found himself invited to bring his Chinese landscapes for a solo exhibition at Artists’ Space gallery in Melbourne.

Most of his works sold, and he was keen to paint something of this foreign land to take home to China. As urban scenes failed to inspire him, friends suggested a trip to Outback Australia. In Alice Springs he encountered Aboriginals for the first time, and instantly knew he wanted to paint them. His next destination was Uluru.

He managed to hitchhike part of the journey, but as no motor vehicles appeared, he began walking. The bushland attracted him, and he wandered off to explore, but as dusk approached he found that he was hopelessly lost. Three aboriginal boys suddenly appeared, as he was on the verge of collapse. Their only words he could make out were: “Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee,” the name of the Hong Kong martial arts film and TV hero. Nonetheless, he was able to communicate his friendship, and the boys took him to their campsite where he spent the night with their families. The next day the boys took him to Uluru.

James Bradley’s television documentary, Ochre and Ink, hinges on a remarkable premise. A Chinese landscape painter, Zhou Xiaoping, becomes fascinated with the traditions and Australian Aboriginal culture and develops a 23 year long relationship with its artists in outback Australia. Zhou is accepted by various local Aboriginal communities, gradually learns their painting techniques, and ultimately ends up collaborating with some of indigenous Australia’s most highly regarded artists and historians.

The most remarkable thing about all this though is just how remarkable that premise is: that a Chinese artist might be so fascinated by Aboriginal Australia, and that China and Aboriginal Australia could find a point of common purpose. These two cultures aren’t generally put together, and our surprise at the fact that they might be reveals all kinds of racial stereotypes and presumptions.

As Aboriginal historian, Marcia Langton, says in the film: ‘There’s a view that any collaboration between an Aboriginal artist and a non-Aboriginal artist is somehow suspect. They want to somehow exclude Aboriginal people altogether from modernity.’ And as linguist Murray Garde goes on, ‘Chinese people are not allowed to be interested in other cultures; they’ve just got to stay on this side of the line.’