Vivian Ling was born in wartime China and educated in the U.S. She taught for 24 years at Oberlin College before moving overseas to direct study-abroad Chinese language programs, most notably the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at National Taiwan University in Taipei and Tsinghua University in Beijing. Her last position was Director of the Chinese Flagship program at Indiana University. She has authored and edited Chinese language textbooks, dictionaries, books on modern Chinese literature, and most recently The Field of Chinese Language Education in the U.S.: A Retrospective of the 20th Century . She lives in Washington DC.

Peng Wang joined the faculty of the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures at Georgetown University in 2002, and has taught various levels of Chinese language courses, including Business Chinese and Intensive Chinese for Advanced Beginners. Professor Wang has also taught Chinese language as the chief instructor at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University and as visiting professor at Oberlin College and Brown University. In the summer of 2010 and 2012, Professor Wang served as the academic director for the State Department-sponsored Critical Language Scholarship Program in Shanghai.