Jiageng Fan specializes in the linguistic relationship between the Chinese and Japanese languages and scripts, focusing on the etymology of characters. He has lived, studied and taught Chinese, Japanese and English in China and Australia and has traveled extensively. After obtaining a B.A. at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, then working as a magazine editor, he moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, where he earned a First Class Honours Degree from the University of Canterbury.

William McNaughton was the founding teacher of Chinese at Oberlin College. From 1986 he taught at Hong Kong's City University, where he was the founding program leader of the BA (Honours) program in Translation and Interpretation.

"Reading & Writing Chinese places at your fingertips the essential 1,725 Chinese characters' up-to-date definitions, derivations, pronunciations, and examples of correct usage by means of cleverly condensed grids. This guide also focuses on Pinyin, which is the official system to transcribe Hanzi, Chinese characters, into Latin script, now universally used in mainland China and Singapore. Traditional characters (still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are also included, making this a complete reference. Newly updated and revised, these characters are the ones officially prescribed by the Chinese government for the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK)"--Publisher's website.