Yan Shen has been a lecturer in Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles since 2005. She has a Masters in Sinology and Anthropology from the University of Trier in Germany and a Bachelors in Chinese Language and Literature from Capital Normal University in Beijing, China. She was born in China and lived in Beijing for more than two decades. She taught Chinese as a second language at the International Chinese Language and Culture Center at Tsinghua University between 1993 and 2004, and she has been a certified Oral Proficiency Tester for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages since 2012. She has published articles in journals such as The Journal of Tsinghua University and presented at national and global conferences, including ACTFL and CLTA. She has served as a reviewer for the Critical Language Scholarship Program (Chinese) for several years.