Frommer's China

Simon Foster was born in London and grew up in rural Yorkshire. Family trips first kindled his wanderlust and after graduating in geography from University College London, he set off to seek what he had been studying. He started work as an adventure tour leader in the Middle East in 1997 and was then posted to India and China. Lengthy e-mails home evolved into travel writing and he has contributed to several. Simon now lives with his wife and dog in sunny southern Taiwan and leads Grasshopper Adventures' (www.grasshopperadventures.com) Taiwan and Silk Road Story photography tours. When he's not travel writing or tour leading, Simon enjoys, you guessed it, travel, whether to the Philippines or just back home to Yorkshire.

Jen Lin-Liu has worked as a freelance journalist based in China for 5years. She has written for the Associated Press, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Though born in Chicago, she was raised in southern California and studied at Columbia University. She is currently writing a book about how and what modern China eats. She would like to thank Wang Xin, Sherrise Pham, Hyeon-Ju Rho, and Matt Flynn for their much-needed help in traveling to far-flung places.

Sharon Owyang, born in Singapore and a graduate of Harvard University, divides her time between film and television projects in the U.S. and China, and freelance travel writing. She is the author of Frommer's Shanghai, 3rd Edition, and also contributed to the 1st edition of Frommer's China. She has also written about Shanghai, China, Vietnam, and San Diego for Insight Guides, Compact Guides, the Los Angeles Times, and several websites. She speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and enough Shanghainese to be a curiosity to the locals. When she's not traveling, she pays her dues in Los Angeles, California.

Sherisse Pham graduated from the University of British Columbia and immediately hopped across the Pacific Ocean to live in Asia. She is a Beijing-based freelancer who has contributed to several Frommer's guides, including Frommer's Vietnam, Frommer's China, Frommer's Beijing, and Beijing Day by Day. She has also worked for Zagat's Survey as a shopping editor and contributed to several local and international magazines and websites. She would like to thank Karen Xiaoling Wang for her excellent work as a fact-checker and occasional translator. A big thank you also goes out to Linda Barth, her editor at Frommer's, who polished things off and fashioned it into the wonderful guide you have today.

Before she could even read, Beth Reiber couldn't wait to go to her grandparents' house so she could pour through their latest National Geographic. After living several years in Germany as a freelance travel writer for major U.S. newspapers and in Tokyo as editor of the Far East Traveler, she authored several Frommer's guides, including Frommer's Japan, Frommer's Tokyo, and Frommer's Hong Kong. She also contributes to Frommer's Europe from $85 a Day, Frommer's Europe by Rail, and Frommer's USA, and writes a monthly column on Japan. When not sleeping in far-flung hotels, she resides in Lawrence, Kansas, with her two sons, a dog, and a cat.

Lee Wing-sze, born and raised in Hong Kong, is a freelance writer, translator, and avid traveler. She studied English Journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University and has worked for the city's English-language newspapers, the South China Morning Post and The Standard, and contributed to Cosmopolitan's Hong Kong edition. Her dream is to travel every country on the earth.

Christopher D. Winnan's love/hate relationship with the continent currently known as China has lasted more than a decade. He has lived and worked in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and, unable to keep his comments to himself, has written extensively in both English and Chinese, most recently for Time Out and Intercontinental Press. Last year he bought a retirement house in Thailand, but even that cannot seem to keep him away from China, and he is currently residing in Dali, Yunnan Province.