Immersion Guides

Author Biographies

Eric Abrahamsen is a freelance writer and translator. He has so far mercilessly consumed three FLTRP Chinese-English dictionaries in the course of his studies, and wears their battered, bloody covers on a string around his neck. He only comes out for Golden Week holidays, and spotting him swimming beneath Yinding Bridge is said to augur either a bumper year for willow catkins, or hail.

Lee Ambrozy is a writer, translator, and critic of contemporary culture and art in China. She is a regular contributor to that’s Beijing, that’s Shanghai, artnet, ARTiT, and other publications, a masters candidate in Chinese Art Theory at Tsinghua University and the curator of sinopop.org, a website devoted to Chinese pop culture and 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 detours on his commute home. His favorite Friendly is Jingjing.

Natalie Behring, whose portrait of a gymnast is featured in this book’s 
composite cover image, 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.

It didn't take long for Jon Campbell to drum his way into the music scene; pretty soon thereafter he was writing about it for that’s Beijing and a range of international media. When he’s not co-producing the Time Arts Jazz Series, working on the Midi Festival, or promoting any number of shows (ygtwo.com), he rocks with bands Black Cat Bone and RandomK(e). Occasionally he goes to Scandinavia in the company of Chinese punk rockers.

Ithaca New York native Mary X Dennis has wanted to come to China ever since Big Bird and Barkley made it look cool in the 80s. Last year 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. She also likes to take pictures.

Photojournalist Tom Carter of San Francisco has spent the past two years traveling extensively throughout the 33 provinces of China. He is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People.

When not busy managing communications for an NGO in Beijing, Jim Boyce is searching for excellent cocktails, eccentric characters and the latest news in Beijing’s drinking scene. This Canuck operates blogs on Beijing’s drinking scene (beijingboyce.com) and China’s wine scene (grapewallofchina.com).

John Brennan spent a year in China in 1982 teaching English at Beijing Number 2 Foreign Language Institute. Before he returned to China in 2005, he worked in Australia as a policy officer in education and training. In Beijing he gets by as a freelance writer and editor.

Alison M. Friedman has been working in the performing arts in China as a research scholar, choreographer/performer, and consultant since 2002 when she came to Beijing on a Fulbright Fellowship to research the development of modern dance in this country. She escapes Beijing pollution by touring abroad with the Beijing Modern Dance Company as their International Director, and since 2007 she has worked with Ge Hua Cultural Development Group on the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

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.

Matt P. Jager's mom told him that he’s as cool as he wants to be. After stunted careers in cliff-diving, Stoic dentistry, rock-and-rolling and global loitering, that’s Beijing rescued him from his aimless misery. Now he is committing suicide by liver cirrhosis for ten grand a month, writing and researching and slaughtering brain cells by the bazillion as nightlife editor for the monthly magazine. He wants to be pretty cool.

Beijing-born Shelley Jiang longs to pass for a real Beijinger after 17 years in the US, but to her chagrin, she is generally mistaken for Korean, Vietnamese or – the worst – a nanfangren. That doesn’t stop her from path-integrating through the city’s streets on her bicycle, on an endless search for decent coffee, proper clubbin’ and unexpected escapades. Editing and writing for Let’s Go helped her fall in love with book-making and overly ambitious travel plans.

Roy Kesey’s fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in more than sixty magazines, including McSweeney’s, The Georgia Review and The Iowa Review, and in several anthologies including The Future Dictionary of America, New Sudden Fiction, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and Best American Short Stories. He’s the author of a novella called Nothing in the World and a collection of short stories called All Over.

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 that’s Beijing’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.

Catherine Lee – “C-Pain” to her colleagues – first fell in love with Beijing during her gap year, but it was only during her summer as an Immersion Guides intern that she discovered her inner fashionista. The theme days she initiated revolutionized office style, making the IG team the best dressed/flashiest/trashiest/clashiest under heaven. When not shopping for sparkly treasure, she enjoys wearing her sunglasses at night and sipping margaritas with chuan’r. Back at Stanford, she walks backwards and makes music.

Freelance food writer and translator Zoe Li first associated food with power when her mother used chicken mcnugget remunerations and coca cola embargoes to control her children. Zoe is now trying to come to terms with her dark obsession with cheap fried finger foods and fizzy drinks, which she thinks she hides well within laziji and champagne, and makes sure to do whatever her mother asks because she loves her mother deeply.

Simon Lim left his native Singapore in 1988 for his first China visit, proceeding to drift from continent to continent, taking photographs all the while. Since floating back in Beijing in 2002, he’s published three manuals on the art of charming one’s way out of a traffic ticket. When not nursing his passion for making Beijing look beautiful, he follows his muse to Egyptian hookah opium dens and Afghani gun markets as often as he can.

Freelance journalist and food lover Ann Mah lived in Beijing for four years. A former Viking Penguin book editor, she has written for the International Herald Tribune, Conde Nast Traveler, South China Morning Post and other publications. Ann is currently researching a self-study project on the regional cuisines of China.

Composer Eli Marshall has lived in Beijing since 2003 (first arriving on a Fulbright grant), has taught at the Central Conservatory, and is artistic director of the Beijing New Music Ensemble (www.beijingnewmusic.org). His works have been performed throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States; his recent work, based on Matteo Ricci, premiered in Macau and was awarded the top prize in ASCAP’s 2007 young composer awards.

Halla Mohieddeen: “Ah come frae Scotland, ken whit ah mean, pal? I like goan shoappin’ and buyin’ stuff like trackie bottoms which ah pit in ma soaks. Ah like buying booze an all, and goan fir Buckie seshes wi’ ma bezzies. China’s guid, ‘cos ye can get deep-fried mars bars and cheap bevvies. Ah also ken whit the weather’s like the day efter it happens. Aye. Now get oota ma face or ah’ll rip yer jaw.”

Two years after moving to Beijing from Taipei, Azorean descendant Gabriel “Lhastravaganza” Monroe wholeheartedly believes that wearing pajamas in public testifies to spiritual indigenousness. As an Immersion Guides editor, Gabriel bullies talented writers into learning to make a thizz face. When not stirring thick vats of glue, words and whimsy, he makes up vaguely ribald Chinese nicknames for days of the week and regulates his serotonin flow with an ever-present stash of homegrown habaneros.

A self-professed child of the colonies, Simon Ostheimer grew up in British Hong Kong, bearing witness to the historical handover in 1997. A magazine editor by profession, this rather young “Old China Hand,” is working his way through the publishing houses of China. Formerly a resident of Shanghai, a period which included work for City Weekend, Time Out and that’s Shanghai, he is currently Managing Editor of Beijing-based lifestyle monthly, tbjhome.

When Alex Pasternack, an itinerant New Yorker cum Beijinger, isn’t banging his head to some yaogun, he’s entranced by the heavy metal and the rest of the development transforming the city around him. Before landing in Beijing, Alex lived in Hong Kong and Siberia. He’s written for Fodors, Let’s Go, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Observer and that’s Beijing.

Neither his upbringing in Paris nor degree in classics predestined Adam Pillsbury to life in Beijing, to which he and wife Judy moved “for two years” in ‘98. After stints as a teacher and freelance writer, he found his calling editing books and maps with deft and effervescent colleagues. A funk bassist in a post-rock band, Adam is happiest in the company of his wife and crackerjack daughters, Alexandra and Eliza.

Having trained her eye in the markets, boutiques and secondhand stores of Tokyo, Paris and Toronto, artist and Yabaolu expert Judy Pillsbury has scoured Beijing for nearly a decade, children in tow, in search of good deals, great finds and amazing tales to share with Immersion Guides and that’s Beijing readers.

Found asleep on the steps outside the office, Oliver Robinson was lured into working full-time for that’s Beijing with the promise of a warm bowl of milk each morning. Needless to say, the warm milk never materialized, which was lucky since Oliver recently discovered he is dangerously lactose intolerant. “I’m dangerously lactose intolerant,” he said recently. Oliver compensates for his inability to attend milk and cheese events with an honest temperament and a keen interest in bespoke costuming.

After Berwin Song traded his low-paying freelancer lifestyle and beloved Bay Area hip-hop beat for the full-time, low-paying position as Music (and Stage, and In Print, and finally, Deputy Managing) editor of that’s Beijing, he got so dangerously immersed in the local music scene, he became a giant man-eating catfish. But because he has dreads instead of whiskers, he was happily accepted into a Chinese reggae band.

Alice Wang has been interested in film since childhood, when she watched movies in the open-air cinema in her seaside hometown in Shandong. Her favorite director is Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose film A Summer at Grandpa’s (Dongdong de Jiaqi) is exactly like her childhood experiences in her grandpa’s home. Alice dreams of sating her fixation with the silver-screen at film festivals around the world.

Haley Warden hails from the Middle of Nowhere, Maine, and stumbled into Beijing one day after too many cups of coffee. Currently in her senior year at Yale, Haley capped off several longish stints in China since 2002 with an internship at Immersion Guides, where she excelled at harassing writers and editing listings. She enjoys sparkly things, organizing her desk, and her host family’s dumplings.

Despite growing up in suburban Texas, Amy Xue is a city girl at heart who has grown fond of squirming through sweaty subways, perching precariously on the back of brake-less bikes, haggling over every kuai, and attempting to mask her Shanghai accent with sporadic ‘er addendums. This carboholic will miss Beijing’s bounty of bing, baozi, jiaozi and noodles, but she is excited about returning to clean air, sunny skies, and palm trees at Stanford University.

Old-school Beijinger and original Insider Jackie Yu’s bicycle is broken, and having to find another hobby with which to kill time, he took up traveling. He returns from each trip with dirt-cheap souvenirs and empty pockets, which adds to his panic over how to make his mortgage payments and pay his car bills. His experiences have, however, given him the courage to mishandle the Housing & Hotels and Transportation chapters.

Janek Zdzarski Jr from Poland first came to China in 2001 and… was amazed. More than one year ago he quit his job as a news photographer for a major Polish newspaper and moved to Beijing with his lovely wife, Ola. Janek is a freelance photojournalist for Chinese and European media and sometimes writes stories and articles. China is like a drug for him that makes him alternately feel happy, sad, empowered and ill. His remedy is a camera and a notebook – the effects can be found 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 and quit her job to become a freelance photographer – a profession which 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.

Last but not least, we extend a heartfelt shout out to our editorial colleagues at True Run Media whose wit and wisdom inspired us to soldier on through the dog days of summer. They are giants among humans, really, without whose expertise and assistance this book would not exist. We’d like to single out, in semi-geographical order, Editorial Director Jerry “DJ Bootyclap” Chan; tbjHome-y and ambrosial grinch Jie Yang; Staff Writer and Olympic Spirit April Zhang; Visual Editor and cartoon master Joey Guo; tbjKids editors and family funkateers Cate Conmy and Simon Fowler; the unflappable family of listings editors Paul Pennay, Cecily Huang, Venus Lau and Michaela Kabat (our answer to K.C. and the Sunshine Band), and especially our wise, sharp-eyed and forgiving copy editors Tom Spearman and Lilly Chow, without whom our book would be tragically ridden with misspeelings.

And of course, without the inspiration, hugs, teamwork and support of the entire True Run Media family – especially our rainmakers, Business Development Manager Toni Ma and General Manager Mike Wester (see Business and Work, p581) – we would most likely be no more than an unknown ecosystem of beautiful, tragically talented germs.