Damian Harper : Coordinating author. Beijing, the Great Wall, the Yangzi, Gànsù. After graduating with a degree in Chinese (modern and classical) from London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Daman moved to pre-handover Hong Kong before embarking on an epic nine-province journey for the 6th edition of Lonely Planet China. Since then he has worked on five further editions and has worked in Shanghai and Beijing (developing a Mandarin accent somewhere between the two), contributing to multiple editions of the Lonely Planet Beijing and Shanghai city guides.
Piera Chen : Hong Kong, Macau. Piera has been travelling to Macau since she was six. Over the years, while working in Hong Kong, it was poetry readings, fado concerts, and a masterfully executed pato de cabidefa (duck stewed in its own blood) that kept luring her back. For this book, she spoke to insiders of the casino industry, and scoured the streets for indie music dives, art spaces and other unpolished gems.
Piera also co-authored the 14th Lonely Planet Hong Kong & Macau city guide. Chung Wah Chow : Guangdong, Guangxi. Chung Wah is a Hong Kong native who has travelled extensively in the mainland. The sheer diversity of China's languages has always fascinated her. Cantonese. Hakka. Tai. Uighur, Teochew and Hokkien - she loves them all. With an advanced degree in translation studies, a penchant for travel and discovering new sounds and words, Chung Wah merged her talents by becoming a travel writer.
She contributed to the previous Lonely Planet edition of China and co-authored Lonely Planet's Hong Kong & Macau city guide. Daisy Harper : Zhejiang, Shanxi, Hubei. Daisy grew up in the old town of balmy Qingdao on the Shandong coast before studying for four years at Beijing Normal University. She moved to London in the mid-1990s but her seaside roots see her holidaying occasionally in Brighton, Hastings, Margate and even Bournemouth.
Daisy has also lived in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore and returns to China frequently to visit family and friends and to journey across her homeland. Married with two children, she has worked on two editions of Lonely Planet's China.