Ji-li Jiang

Ji-li Jiang was born in Shanghai in 1954. Both her parents were actors, although her mother quit the theater when she started having children. Ji-li and her two younger siblings, Ji-yong, and Ji-yun lived with their parents and paternal grandmother in Shanghai. Ji-li excelled at school from a young age, but her family got caught up by the revolutionary fervor of China’s Cultural Revolution. Her father was detained and eventually sent to the countryside to be reeducated by hard labor in a prison camp. Ji-li eventually earned her teacher’s certificate from Shanghai University and taught science in China for several years, but she fled the country in the early 1980s and moved to Hawaii. There she attended the University of Hawaii and launched a career in the travel, hospitality, and healthcare industries. Red Scarf Girl, published in 1997, was her first book. She has since authored several more books for young readers, and she founded a nonprofit, called Cultural Exchange International.