Diane Perushek has traveled to China over sixty times over the past few decades. She worked as head of the East Asian libraries at Princeton and Cornell Universities, and is the current Director of Global Relations at the University of Hawai‘i. She earned a master’s degree in modern Chinese literature from Columbia University and did her Ph.D. work in classical Chinese literature at Princeton University. She has taught courses on the history of Chinese books and printing, and is an avid fan of Chinese cuisine.