Immersion Guides

Author Biographies

Eric Abrahamsen is a freelance writer, translator and editor who has been living in Beijing since 2001. He divides his time more or less equally between translating Chinese literature into English, and bumming around Beijing’s streets. The former activity has resulted in Paper Republic, a website about Chinese literature, and the latter in Beijing by Foot, a guide to walking in Beijing. He fills the intervening moments by baking bread.

Lee Ambrozy is researching Chinese art history at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts. She writes for Art Forum and is a translator specializing in art-related texts. She maintains sinopop.org, a website documenting Chinese pop culture and contemporary art.

Beijing-born webmaster Bai Xu enjoys drinking beer, reading books, traveling and exploring his hometown on foot and bike with his trusty camera at his side. His expensive and time-consuming hobbies could explain his empty bank account and current single lifestyle.

One college summer, Reid Barrett took a Chinese class “on a whim.” Six years on, he has discovered Beijing’s drawl at Beijing Normal University, experimented with a Taiwanese lisp in San Diego and perfected his Russian-accented Chinese at the Xinjiang dive near his apartment. Reid still engages in many whim-related China activities but now they are more apt to be inner-tubing near the Summer Palace, and unexpected commuting detours. His favorite Fuwa is Jingjing.

Natalie Behring is a freelance photographer based in Beijing, covering stories throughout China and Asia. From a humble beginning in rural America, she arrived in China in 1994 fresh out of university, where she stumbled into photography. Her work includes mostly editorial subjects but also food and architectural images. She is currently working on a project about the modernization of Beijing, which can be seen at www.nataliebehring.com

John Brennan spent a year in China in 1982, came back in 2005 to check on a couple of details, got distracted and forgot to leave. Since then he has experienced moments of clarity that have allowed him to write for the Insider’s Guide, the Beijinger, Urbane and Australian magazines. He is now an editor with Immersion Guides.

Jon Campbell showed up in Beijing 2000 to study a bit of Mandarin and has, for the bulk of his time since, been on many sides of the local music scene. His writing thereupon has appeared in numerous publications local and international; his drumming can currently be found in blues band Black Cat Bone and spacey-rockers RandomK(e); and his impresariorial stamp, YGTwo, upon many gigs and tours for international bands of many kinds.

Adam Dean is a freelance photographer based in Beijing covering stories throughout Asia and the Middle East, from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in Pakistan to the Burma cyclone and ongoing fighting in Afghanistan. He arrived in China in 2006 as part of a six-month exchange program for a master’s degree in photography and still hasn’t managed to leave. You can see more of his work at www.adamdean.net

Ithaca, New York native Mary Dennis has wanted to come to China ever since Big Bird and Barkley made it look cool in the 80s. Two years ago she realized her dream and is still here, currently waiting for the ponds to freeze so she can combine her two favorite activities: playing hockey and being outside. The art editor at the Beijinger also likes to take pictures.

Mason Flink came to Beijing for the Olympics, but once he realized that 1) tickets were too expensive and 2) he wasn’t actually that interested in sports, he decided to try his hand at travel writing. A junior at Stanford University, Mason spends his free time taking artsy photographs, watching quality television, playing the piano and memorizing enough interesting tidbits from Wikipedia to always keep the conversation going (silence isn’t golden – it’s deadly).

As a six year-old living in Beijing, Joshua Frank couldn’t get enough street-side jianbing or cheap Sichuan food. Thirteen years later, he and his appetite have returned with a vengeance. When not hunkered down over plates of mala madness, Joshua can be found mangling his bass at D-22, where he performs in some of the city’s noisiest groups. He also enjoys riding (and deriding) his third-hand Flying Pigeon. Joshua studies at McGill University in Montreal.

Alison M. Friedman has been working in the performing arts in China as a researcher, choreographer/performer and consultant since 2002, when she came to Beijing on a Fulbright Fellowship to research modern dance in China. In 2008 she traitorously defected to Shanghai to run the production company of Oscar-winning composer/conductor Tan Dun, but sneaks back to Beijing at least twice a month. She produces dance festivals in her spare time.

Sean Gallagher is a British zoology graduate turned worldwide photographer. His work focuses on environmental and social issues in Asia, with a heavy emphasis on China. His work has appeared in many leading international publications. In 2008 he was the recipient of the first stipend from the David Alan Harvey Fund for Emerging Photographers, in association with the Magnum Photos Cultural Foundation. He is currently based in Beijing. His work can be viewed at www.gallagher-photo.com

Donna Scaramastra Gorman lives and works in Shunyi. She is the primary caretaker for four kids, one husband and a dog. When she’s not busy baking cookies, refereeing fights or searching for the remote control, she likes to write. Her work has been published in Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, Horizon Air magazine and a bunch of other places. She also writes regularly for beijingkids magazine.

Jim Gourley lives in Tianjin and participated in the photographic book project, One Night in Beijing. Over the past ten months he’s become obsessed with the China Central Television complex. His conceptual battles with the project can be found at his sometimes irreverent blog. His photos of the CCTV Headquarters and TV Cultural Center have been exhibited in the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine (CAPA) in Paris.

Jonathan Haagen is a feature writer for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and contributes regularly to the Far Eastern Economic Review, China International Business and City Weekend. His first novel, Climbing Strange Mountain, was released by the Liaoning Publishing Group in the fall of 2006. Unsigned copies are considered rare and valuable.

Nathaniel Hillard, Chinese name “Southern Emperor He”, was born in a corn-covered Midwestern temple in Ohio, USA. His supreme athletic prowess shone through at an early age; the emperor could boast a 21-minute mile before his 18th birthday. Giving up an Olympic track bid, his Highness took to the book, and enrolled at Stanford on an Imperial Mandate of Heaven scholarship. When he’s not building boats of solid marble, he studies neuroscience and Chinese.

Sandra Huang has worked, eaten and explored her way across East Asia. She has threatened the duck population in the Dordogne and has mouth-watering plans for the fatty pigs across China. Sandra balances her work in education and international development with freelance writing and her job as chief writer for www.savourasia.com, an online guide dedicated to all that is good to eat in Hanoi, Beijing, Bangkok and beyond.

Jeremiah Jenne is a PhD candidate at UC Davis in Beijing teaching history and working on his dissertation. He is also the author of the Chinese history blog Jottings from the Granite Studio.

Old-school Beijinger and original insider Yuki Jia dramatically revealed to stunned colleagues her secret three-year romance with Jackie Yu, another old school Beijinger and an editor of the Insider’s Guide to Beijing, by marrying him on August 8, 2008. Since then, life has been a fairytale for our prince and princess, and, after their honeymoon in the Philippines, Yuki reports that she has embraced Jackie’s love of travel.

Shelley Jiang was born in the psychic shadow of two great temples of Beijing. To this she attributes her subsequent talents and good fortune to be living here again. She adores the local flora and fauna, scrambles over mountains, takes pictures and spends much time meditating over maps and words. She went to Harvard, where she wrote and edited for the Let’s Go travel guides. She can tell you something about bean-related hutongs.

Through four years in Asia, Matt P. Jager has cavorted with mafiosos, scuffled with kung fu artists, dined with headhunters, jammed with sea gypsies, wrassled with orangutans, and palled around with terrorists. His work as the Beijinger’s former Bars & Clubs editor enraged bloggers, bosses, and barmen. Now he looks forward to a quiet retirement in Indianapolis, where he will munch Hoosier sweet corn every afternoon. He cannot tell a lie.

Freelance photographer and kilt-wearing Scot, Matthew Kelly followed his Chinese partner to Beijing in July 2007. He has travelled throughout Europe and North Africa, taking pictures for a variety of UK-based publications. Easily recognized as a white-haired, ageing hippy wandering around the parks of Beijing in vintage Ray Bans, he’s currently working on a book on park life in Beijing and trying to improve his feeble attempts at Mandarin. www.mkellyphotos.com

Roy Kesey is the author of three books including a novella called Nothing in the World and a short story collection called All Over. His work has appeared in more than sixty magazines, and in several anthologies including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction. He currently lives in Syracuse, NY, with his wife and children, and you’ll never believe what he just found in his pocket.

Kaiser Kuo was born in New York, raised in Arizona, and really started living when he moved to Beijing, where he’s lived for about 15 years. He’s written the Beijinger’s back page “Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” column since the magazine launched in October 2001. Between columns he serves as digital strategy director for an ad agency, plays guitar in a Chinese heavy metal band, writes a blog, and tries to be a good husband to his wife Fanfan and a good father to their two young children.

Illustrator and designer Li Xing, a Beijing native, started painting when she was a young girl. She graduated from the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts with a degree in stage design before taking a job with True Run Media, where she works on the Beijinger magazine and the Immersion Guides series.

Simon Lim left his native Singapore for his first China visit in 1987, then drifted from continent to continent. Since his exile to Beijing in 2002, he’s published manuals on flouting traffic rules, and pick-up lines for photographers. Between jaunts through Sanlitun bars and Afghani gun markets he has slapped together a career as True Run Media’s photo editor and as a freelancer for AFP, the SCMP, Greenpeace and anyone willing to pay him.

As a child in Ithaca, NY, Gabriel Monroe rolled off his bunk bed. He traces his gift for rhetorical skew to this incident. Since 2005, he has rolled around Beijing, paid to stoke his curiosity and passion for the city as an editor first for Immersion Guides, and then for Urbane magazine. His product designs – the Lung Grummer, Swear Bag, Whimsytron, Interweb Whip, and so on – are heedful enhancements for cosmopolitan life.

After years of sampling the flavors of Asia and New York, Eileen Wen Mooney brought her discerning palate to China, where she has worked as a freelance food writer contributing articles to Time Out, That’s Beijing, Fodor’s China, and Zagat Beijing. She also appeared in Rhodes Across China, a six part TV special on Chinese food. Eileen is the author of Beijing Eats, which introduces 26 Chinese cuisines and 150 restaurants in the capital.

Four out of the past eight years of Matthew Niederhauser’s life were lost documenting Asia while crisscrossing the continent or engaging in other forms of skullduggery. Although he continues to lug over ten kilos of camera equipment every trip, Matthew now finds the pen a necessary addition while chronicling his peripatetic lifestyle. In the meantime, he is often found haunting backstreet dumpling houses, dive bars and music clubs across Beijing. So it goes … www.mdnphoto.com

Jenny Niven came to Beijing in 2004 with a background in television and radio. After a year with China Radio International, she moved full time to The Bookworm, where she manages Events and Marketing for The Bookworm Group (Beijing, Chengdu, Suzhou) and directs the company’s annual International Literary Festival. Jenny was Books Editor for Time Out Beijing from 2006 to 2008. She likes books and playing pool, and should probably widen her circle of interests.

Madeleine O’Dea first came to China in the late ‘80s as a rookie reporter, and fell in with a bunch of drunks and artists who later became millionaires. After a decade of visiting China every year or so as a current affairs TV producer with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, she moved here in 2004. After a long entanglement with the art world, she has come in to land as the Deputy Editor of Urbane magazine.

In 2006 Alex Pasternack blew into Beijing on a massive sandstorm, and his Forever bicycle has been stuck in a traffic jam since then. When he isn’t pondering the delicious strangeness of China, he writes on the environment, architecture and culture. He served as upfront and features editor of Urbane magazine, and his articles have appeared in places like Icon, Time, Newsweek, the Beijinger, TreeHugger.com and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Beijing put the mojo on Adam Pillsbury one wet evening in July ’94. He and wife Judy returned “for two years” in ‘98, and this Parisian has gawked at Beijing’s Haussmannian transformation ever since. The managing editor of Immersion Guides, Adam also plays funk bass in a post-rock band. He is happiest in the company of his wife and crackerjack daughters, Alexandra and Eliza.

Trying to see things from different perspectives and taking the risk of being perceived as an un-cool smart-ass – that’s pretty much Jacopo Della Ragione’s life. Proud son of Florence, Italy, he’s tried to learn something new every day since landing in China six years ago. He takes photos too.

After incurring a terrible injury at a cheese-eating competition, Oliver Robinson, the former managing editor of the Beijinger, was forced into an early retirement. He now keeps the books for a reputable Venetian merchant. In his spare time, Oliver enjoys torturing himself by checking out his ex-girlfriends on Facebook.

Ol’ Jiaozi Song (aka Berwin Song) wants to have his xiaolongbao and eat jiaozi too: despite leaving the city immediately after the Olympics and promptly moving to Shanghai, he remains a committed friend of the Big Dumpling. A former deputy managing editor of the Beijiinger, he continues to court controversy down south writing about all things A&E.

Devan Shea first fell for Beijing when she spent her senior year of high school in China. Returning as an Immersion Guides intern two years later, she spent most of her time munching Hubei food and reminiscing about the “good old days” of 2006. She also edited things. As far as she knows, she is the first IG intern to have achieved “baller” status. Back in Manhattan, she enjoys people-watching and cursing the 1 train.

Bob Thorp has been visiting Beijing since 1979. An art historian and archaeologist, he has participated in excavations with the National Musuem of China and the Institute of Archaeology and curated an exhibition of Chinese art for the Cultural Heritage Administration. Retired from Washington University in St. Louis, he now lectures to tour groups twice a year. His most recent publication is Visiting Historic Beijing, a guide to the city’s historic architecture.

When Jessica Wang, a journalist and foodie from California, is not eating barbequed pork buns or attempting to make hand-pulled noodles in her closet-sized kitchen, she’s watching cooking shows on BTV 7. She first discovered Beijing in 2005, and back in the States, she couldn’t forget cumin-flavored yangrou chuan’r, so she returned and landed a job as dining editor for the Beijinger magazine. She would love to travel the world while writing about food.

Fongyee Walker and Edward Ragg left leafy Cambridge, England, to set up Dragon Phoenix, Beijing’s first independent wine consultancy. Educators and presenters, they’ve run the gauntlet, from opening a wine store in deepest, darkest Hubei to organizing tastings for China’s top CEOs. They are quietly eating their way through the country’s major cuisines and have on-going debates about matching wine with Sichuan cai. They live in hope for Chinese wine.

Carissa Welton first began investigating how to shake what her mama gave her in China shortly after Spring Festival, 2004. She was lured to the capital in 2005 to pursue English teaching during the day and intensive nightlife research by night. She remains in Beijing today, where she discovers something new to report on and sometimes even dances about on a regular basis.

Old-school Beijinger and original insider Jackie Yu dramatically revealed to stunned colleagues his secret three-year romance with Yuki Jia, another old school Beijinger and the lead designer of the Insider’s Guide to Beijing, by marrying her on August 8, 2008. Since then, life has been a fairytale for our prince and princess, and, after their honeymoon in the Philippines, Jackie reports that Yuki has embraced his love of travel.

Janek Zdzarski Jr first came to China in 2001 and … was amazed. Two years ago he quit his job as a photographer with a Polish daily newspaper, and moved with his lovely wife Ola to Beijing, where he works as a freelance photojournalist. In 2008 he published a 480-page photo book entitled China – 431km/h. China makes him happy and sad, gives him power and makes him sick, and the results are at www.zdzarski.com

Once upon a time, Luna Zhang worked for a software company and enjoyed dancing, shopping, traveling and watching movies … but it got boring. So in 2005 she picked up a camera, quit her job and became a freelance photographer – a profession that liberated her artistic spirit. Luna loves taking portraits, as well as anything else that communicates the human experience. She hopes to produce works that capture the zeitgeist and stir the soul. www.luna.cdd.cn

Inspired by the bewitching beauty of Xinjiang – in National Geographic magazine and then firsthand, while traveling as a high schooler – Shenzhen native Judy Zhou studied photography at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Art. As a staff photographer for the Beijinger, Urbane and beijingkids, she is a bubbly, poly-talented polyglot. Enjoying a new adventure with each new day, she ably roams around town with Beijing’s most intriguing scenes in her crosshairs.

Then there are our editorial colleagues at True Run Media, without whose support the book would be the poorer. In particular, in a series of more or less clockwise spirals, we salute Editorial Director Jerry Chan, beijingkids galvanizers Michelle Tsai, Amani Zhang and Jessica Pan, the Beijinger powerhouse Lisa Liang, image-sorcerer Joey Guo, Bond-channeler and Agenda-setter Iain Shaw and his agile offsider Jiang Jun, zeitgeist chronicler Cecily Huang, multi-tasking blog-maestro Paul Pennay, IT wizard Jeff Warrington, sartorial consultant and scourge of sommeliers Jonathan White, stylish syntax-whisperer Lilly Chow, and keeper-up of all appearances, Art Director Susu Luo. And in a building far, far away is our matchless admin team, notably the censor-soothing Lisa Ji, Claire Tang and her Amazing Sales Posse, and Kathy Zheng, market manipulatrix extraordinaire. We have all been through an amazing year of change, most of it good, but some of it bad – in which context we tip our hat to colleagues who shot through during the year under the delusion of greener pastures: Halla Mohieddeen, Venus Lau, Fiona Lee, Simon Fowler, Tom Spearman and Fiona Zhang. And our last word has to go to Business Development Manager Toni Ma and General Manager Mike Wester: anyone who says you can’t steer and row at the same time hasn’t met these two, who make the difference between an amiable, talented ship of fools and the sharpest crew this side of the Bohai Gulf.