Louise Bai has pleaded not guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court to a charge of discharging a firearm endangering life. She has pleaded guilty to possession of the gun.

Police alleged Bai took a friend's bolt-action .22 rifle without his knowledge and shot her boyfriend in the shoulder as he came out of the toilet of a McKellar home in February this year.

The published author and self-described direct descendant of Genghis Khan was originally charged with attempted murder, but prosecutors were forced to abandon the charge after her alleged victim retracted his statement, via a handwritten note scrawled in Chinese characters, before he left the country for China.

When police arrived on the scene the man initially pointed at Bai and said: ''She shot me.''

But, in the retraction letter, the man changed his story to claim he had pressured Bai to find him a weapon because he was curious.

He said she initially refused but then took the weapon from an unsuspecting friend after he threatened to move back to Beijing.

The recorded police interview with Bai on the day of the incident was played in court on Thursday.

Bai claimed she had learnt to handle firearms in school in China and by watching movies, claiming using a gun was like using chopsticks.

Bai said she took the gun from an unlocked gun safe at her long-time friend's home with the intention of taking the alleged victim shooting.

She said she could not remember loading the weapon but it went off when the injured man attempted to snatch it from her.

Bai told the police interviewers she did not initially realise the man had been shot as there was no obvious blood.

She said she was a good aim and would not have hit the man in the shoulder if she had been aiming to shoot him.

A triple-0 call Bai made to police after the incident was also played to the court on Thursday. An agitated Bai told the police operator she had been fighting with her boyfriend over a gun and ''he got hurt''.

When asked if he had been shot, she replied: ''Little bit, yes.''

The hearing before Magistrate Robert Cook continues on Friday.