Jeff is the author of "44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass" (2013), 44 Days Publishing, 44days.net. He writes a popular weekly column on his website, "Reflections in Sinoland – Reporting from the Belly of the New Century Beast", and is writing his second book, which will be out later in 2014. Jeff grew up in the heartland of the United States, Oklahoma, and graduated from Oklahoma State University. He went to Brazil while in graduate school at Purdue University, to seek his fortune, which whet his appetite for traveling the globe. This helped inspire him to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia in 1980 and he lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe for the next 21 years. All the while, he mastered Portuguese, Arabic, French and Mandarin, while traveling to over 85 countries. He then returned to America for nine years, whereupon he moved back to China in 2010. He currently lives in Beijing with his wife and younger daughter, where he is an elementary school teacher in an international school. Jeff is a dual national French-American.