Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was born in Shanghai. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she published two works, Romances (1944) and Written on Water (1945), that established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to Hong Hong in 1952 and to the United States in 1955, where she continued to write. She died in Los Angeles in 1995.

Wang Hui Ling was born in Taipei, Taiwan, where she still lives. She majored in piano in the music department at Taipei College of Education before beginning a career as a writer of films and television programs. She has cowritten several movies for Ang Lee, including Eat Drink Man Woman and Crouching Tigger, Hidden Dragon, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, among other honors.

James Schamus is CEO of Focus Features, the studio behind such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Constant Gardener. He is also an award-winning screenwriter and producer (The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and an associate professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003.