This paper discusses how the three major Chinese magazines of foreign literature, i.e. Shijie Wenxue (World Literature), Guowai Wenxue (Overseas Literature), and Waiguo Wenxue (Foreign Literature) — which were (re)launched immediately after the opening-up policy commenced in 1978 —, engaged with “Indian literature” and more broadly “Eastern literature”. While the late 1970s and ‘80s have been widely considered by literary historians a transformative period when the Chinese literary field came under significant Western influence, this paper argues that a concomitant trend of valorising literary works from the “East” was also at work. In spite of their apparent emphasis on Western works, the three magazines played a crucial role in this trend in a miscellaneous and sporadic nature or what can be called “happenstance”. Through the lens of Indian literature, I have identified two different ways in which the “happenstance” of the magazine created new chances for presenting and valorising “Eastern literature”. First, since “Eastern literature” was a nascent concept in China, these literary magazines provided vibrant discursive spaces for scholars to publish their preliminary, largely exploratory and sometimes premature thoughts of the concept, which nevertheless paved the way for future and more systematic configurations to develop. Second, these magazines enabled the introduction of many contemporary Indian authors including “Nayi Kavita” and “Nayi Kahani” (New Poetry and New Story) writers, who had remained unknown to Chinese readers, through the interstitial publication of short pieces, like translations of short stories, poems and plays, as well as interviews and reviews. While these authors never had a book-length translation into Chinese, their stray appearances in literary magazines challenged and enriched the Chinese perception of modern Indian literature by making it expand beyond the conventional focus on leftist “progressivism”. In this way, modernism/modernity and individual sensibility also became keywords with which the Chinese intelligentsia conceptualised “Eastern literature”.