>>Piera Chen

Born to a Shanghainese father and a Pekingnese mother in Hong Kong, Piera is a writer, editor and translator, who works in English, thinks in Chinglish and quarrels in Chinese. Her early life was sprinkled with frequent trips to Taiwan and mainland China to visit relatives, and then to the Philippines and Indonesia where her father was working. But it was during her first trip to Europe, at age 15, that dawn broke. She remembers fresh off a chaotic flight on Alitalia, looking around her outside Aeroporto Roma Fiumicino, thinking, ‘I want to be doing this everyday.’

After Europe, America. Piera went to Pomona College where she studied liberal arts (majoring in English literature) for four years, before spending the next ten back home avoiding all contact with a decent and respectable adult life. During this exciting time, she consorted with radicals and mad men, discovered cultural studies, and re-explored Asia, Europe and the Americas on her own.

Multiple experiments and as many trips later, Piera is happily living the life she shunned, as a writer. She’s penned articles on lifestyle and travel, developed advertising copy for everything from mattresses to fund houses, and edited publications on film, culture, and horseracing. Writing for Lonely Planet has allowed her to constantly relive the thrill of arriving at an airport even when there’s none in sight.

Piera divides her time among Hong Kong, Vancouver and Beijing when not on the road.

>> Chung Wah Chow

Often misidentified as Japanese when on the road, Chung Wah surprises people by her British-tinged accent. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chung Wah started her life of adventure by joining Greenpeace after receiving her law degree, trying to make her hometown toxic-free. While an environmental crusader, she explored most corners of Hong Kong, boated along the Pearl River Delta and fought relentlessly with polluters.

After years of never-ending environmental battles, she decided to hit the road and see the world, pen in hand. She traversed the globe from the Mayan ruins of Mexico to the Muslim regions of the Middle East, and was fascinated by both the quirky Creole and the historic Turkic languages. She returned home with a Silk Road travelogue and a new perspective on her homeland, and has since gone from Lonely Planet user to LP writer.

Awed by the phantasmagoria of sounds and words, and curious about how people have overcome the confusion of tongues since the fall of the Tower of Babel, Chung Wah spent several years studying the history of translation and how it plays an integral role in shaping world culture and dynamics. In additional to travel writing, Chung Wah’s translations and works have appeared in various publications in Hong Kong and Taiwan. When not traveling, she enjoys going yum cha in Hong Kong and researching dialects in China and the diaspora Chinese communities around the world.