SYDNEY, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Australians, especially young people, should visit China more often, and learn some Chinese language if they have the opportunity, as this will help them better understand the real China, Jan Everett, national president of Australia-China Friendship Society (ACFS), has said.
"When they go there and they see people out enjoying themselves shopping, going to supermarkets, going to shows...they get to have a better understanding what China is about," Everett told Xinhua in an interview in Hobart, capital of Australia's island state of Tasmania.
Australians will benefit by seeing the real China and how fast the economy is going, said Everett, who joined the friendship society's Tasmania branch more than 40 years ago and took the role as national president in 2022.
"When they've come back, they've come back with a different impression," she said, adding that it is not as described by some Australian media.
In Everett's home office, a thick stack of the ACFS monthly newsletters are neatly arranged. "Promoting friendship between the peoples of Australia and China," the words are printed on the cover of every issue. On the day of the interview, she was sitting in front of her computer, busy with the society's work.
Everett said that the friendship between the two countries is based on mutual respect and equality. Only through full communication and exchange on both sides can this friendship be maintained, she noted.
"If you got a friendship, you talk to the people, you have dialogue, you work through your problems," she said.
More than 100 years ago, Everett's great-grandfather came to Tasmania from Taishan in China's Guangdong province. "I grew up with Chinese traditions," she said.
Everett, now 76, first set foot in China in 1978 and has visited the country 27 times since then.
In recent years, she has traveled to China almost every year, from Beijing, Shanghai to Xi'an, Xizang, and further to Xiamen and Nanjing. Her journeys have taken her across the length and breadth of the country. Safe and efficient high-speed trains are her preferred mode of travel in China.
"It changes every time I go. I honestly cannot believe how fast it does change," she said. "China is coming ahead in the last 40 years...It's amazing, amazing to me." ■