The Chinese writers will be led by poet in exile Bei Dao (above), and include poets Xi Chuan, Ouyang Jianghe and Zhai Yongming, fiction writer Ge Fei and critic Li Tuo. “These contemporary writers are not mass-market but deeply serious. I am looking forward to hearing Ge Fei for his avant-garde style,” says Sharmistha Mohanty, editor of Almost Island. The Indian group will have Malayalam poet K Satchidanandan, Hindi poet Vinod Kumar Shukla and Bengali poet Joy Goswami apart from Rukmini Bhaya Nair, I.A. Sealy and Ashis Nandy. They will discuss the different vocabulary of modernist writings in both countries. “The interactions we have with our Chinese counterparts in a formal setting are organised by our governments. We seldom see the real contemporary face of Chinese literature because writers who are not spokespersons of the state are seldom part of their official delegation,” says Satchidanandan, adding that he is hopeful about what he considers “India’s first unofficial yet formal literary meet between India and China”.