Frommer's China

Born in Singapore, Sharon Owyang divides her time between film and television projections in the U.S. and China, and freelance travel writing. She was a contributor to Frommers China, 1st edition, and has also written about Shanghai, China, Vietnam, and San Diego for Insight Guides, Compact Guides, and the Los Angeles Times. She speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and enough Shanghainese to be a curiosity to the locals.

Beth Reiber got hooked on travel before she could even read, after she learned her grandmother had been born in Austria and she thumbed through her grandparents' National Geographic. After studying two years at German universities, she returned to Germany as a freelance travel writer, selling articles to several publcations including the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post before moving to Tokyo, where she worked as editor of the Far East Traveler. She now resides in Lawrence, Kansas, with her two sons and is the author of several Frommer's guides, including Frommer's Japan, and Frommer's Hong Kong.

Graeme Smith has lived in China on and off for the past 17 years. He has studied at Beijing and Tsinghua Universities, but attributes his fluency in Mandarin to an incurable love of Chinese soap operas. Graeme is currently a researcher at the Contemporary China Centre of the Australian National University, which gives him a wonderful excuse to spend time with rice farmers and work on poverty alleviation projects in Huoshan County, Anhui (www.cedpa.org.cn).

Jen Lin-Liu, an American living in Beijing, has been a freelance writer in China for five years. She was raised in southern California, received a Bachelor's in Urban Studies and a Master's in Journalism from Columbia University, and worked for the Associated Press before coming to China. She is currently working on a book about Chinese food and culture.