Wang Anyi began her career as a writer in 1978. Her books in English include Lapse of Time, Love in a Small Town, Love on a Barren Mountain, Brocade Valley, and the novel Baotown, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year award. She currently lives in Shanghai and is a professor of Chinese literature at Fudan University.Michael Berry is associate professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakersand A History of Pain: Literary and Cinematic Mappings of Violence in Modern China. He is also the translator of novels by Yu Hua, Ye Zhaoyan,… and Chang Ta-chun.Susan Chan Egan is an independent scholar based in Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of A Latterday Confucian: Reminiscences of William Hung (1893-1980)and coauthor of A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit: The Half-Century Romance of Hu Shi and Edith Clifford Williams.