Internationally renowned documentary filmmaker and food writer Xiaoqing Chen has directed a number of documentaries, including A Bite of China Season I & II and Once Upon A Bite. Currently, he is the Deputy Editor of Tencent video and in charge of DOClabs, a top-level production company.

His dedication and passion led his team and himself to create narrative documentaries artistically and critically. In 2008, holding extensive documentary experiences, he joined Tencent and launched a series of food documentaries. These include Once Upon A Bite, which received over one billion views, and Flavorful Origins: Chaoshan, one of the hottest Food TV Shows on Netflix.

Paul Freedman is professor of history at Yale University where he has taught since 1997 and has served as Chair of the History Department. His primary interests are in the field of medieval European history and the history of food and cuisine, and has produced many related books and articles.

In 2007 Freedman edited Food: The History of Taste, which won a prize from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and has been translated into ten languages. This began a series of studies about the role of food in shaping cultures and historical trends. Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (2008), looks at the desire for spices in the Middle Ages and how it led to European exploration and conquest.

Freedman is the author of Ten Restaurants that Changed America (2016), a way of looking at US food history through ten examples, including Chinese and Italian cuisines adapted to American tastes. His new book, American Cuisine: How It Got This Way, will appear in October 2019.

Carol Li Rafferty is the Managing Director of Yale Center Beijing, Co-Founder of Lean In China. She previously worked for the China Investment Corporation (CIC), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, as Senior Vice President, responsible for strategic and private equity investments.

Carol graduated cum laude from Yale University, with dual B.A. degrees in Economics and International Studies. She received her J.D. degree from Stanford Law School. She is also a China Fellow of the Aspen Institute. In 2016, the World Economic Forum (WEF) selected Carol as a Young Global Leader (YGL), and she currently serves as a member of the YGL Advisory Group, the YGL’s global advisory board.