Out of place: One artist's story of aboriginal life

Zhou has traveled extensively throughout Australia and been to almost every main aboriginal community in the country.

In the early 1990s, he met an aboriginal artist named Jimmy Pike in an aboriginal stronghold in Western Australia.

"We lived under a tree for three weeks during which he told me the folklore of the region and taught me how to survive in the wild," says Zhou. "And we painted together as a pastime."

Their friendship grew through their shared interest in art and mutual respect for each other. In 1996, Zhou returned to his hometown in China with Pike, and held a joint exhibition at the Hefei-Kurume Friendship Art Gallery, which is believed to be the first exhibition of Australian aboriginal art in China.

In 2009, Zhou and another aboriginal artist Johnny Bulunbulun from Arnhem Land, painted a work called From Art to Life, which he brought to an exhibition at the Capital Museum in Beijing two years later.