ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits—and pays tribute to—the Gang of Nine, the forerunners of Australian studies in China, through employing a wider prism to examine their influences on broader Chinese foreign studies. In 1979, they were the first group of Chinese scholar-students to study at the University of Sydney after a stringent selection process. These students cherished the undreamt-of opportunity not long after the one decade of China’s isolation during the Cultural Revolution. They weathered the solitary life and alien environment during the two-year stint in Sydney and carved their names there with pride. Their pioneering spirit and success story, in a way, were very much like those of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program students to America in the early 20th century. Despite the different historical contexts, they all have had great intellectual and emotional resonances with generations of modern Chinese students studying overseas. The cohesiveness of the group’s achievements and identity has won them great respect. After their return to China, their contributions and influences can be conspicuously felt in the fields of Australian literature, translation of Australian literary works, stylistics, linguistics, English and American literature, English language teaching, literary criticism, and cross-cultural communication. This chapter introduces their study in Sydney and reviews their contributions to and influences on a suite of foreign studies in China.
