Simon Elegant was the Southeast Asia bureau chief for DowJones News Service, the Hong Kong arts and society editor and Malaysia correspondent for Far Eastern Economic Review, the Beijing bureau chief and Southeast Asia correspondent for Time magazine, and taught undergraduate modern Chinese history at the Beijing Center for China Studies. Among the six languages he speaks are Mandarin and Malay. He is the author of two previous novels, A Chinese Wedding (Piatkus), and A Floating Life (Ecco/Harper), a fictional biography of China’s greatest poet, Li Bai.  He was also the founding partner and investor in Temple Restaurant Beijing, the goto restaurant for top-end Continental dining in China’s capital.

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