Susie Gordon was born in Lancashire, England, and studied English at Oxford University before moving to London to work as a web content writer for an internet agency. She became interested in China at an early age, listening her grandfather’s stories about the time he spent there as a shipping merchant in the 1950s and ‘60s, but it wasn’t until 2008 that she saw the country for herself. After just one week there, she was already hooked: she was intrigued by Shanghai’s mix of the contemporary and the historic—from the neon and steel of the modern skyline to the tree-arched lanes of the Old French Concession—and she fell in love with the contrast between the austerity of Communist architecture and the romantic, painted eaves of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

After her vacation in China, Susie was so enamored of Shanghai that she decided to move there permanently. She has worked as a freelance journalist for a wide range of publications since then, including City Weekend magazine, Shanghai Business Review, That’s Shanghai, and ChinaTravel.com. She has also appeared as a token Westerner in several movies and soap operas.

Susie enjoys reading modern literary fiction, traveling in Asia, and learning foreign languages (her current goal is to master the notoriously difficult Shanghainese dialect). After having lived in Shanghai for three years, she is happy to be able to call it home.