Zhaoxia Pang (Author) Zhaoxia Pang is a course convenor and senior lector of Mandarin Chinese at SOAS, University of London. She has served on the executive committee of the British Chinese Language Teaching Society and worked as a senior government interpreter and translator. Ruth Herd (Author) Dr Ruth Herd is Co-ordinator of Mandarin Chinese at Imperial College London, where she has developed Chinese language programmes since 2002. She has a long-standing interest in the languages and cultures of East Asia.