Aaron Anthony Vessup was born in Los Angeles, California, the second oldest of sixteen children. He won state recognition as a poetry writer while still at elementary school, and later became a college speech champion, first for California and later Nebraska. After graduating from Nebraska Wesleyan University, he worked for decades as a teacher in universities and schools across the United States, including Elgin Community College in Illinois. He received the Elgin City Martin Luther King award five years in a row for ""Outstanding Cross-Cultural Cable TV Programming."" He moved to China is 2004 to continue his teaching career in a fresh environment. In China, he has lived and worked in three different regions and taught communications and culture classes at a number of schools, colleges and universities. He is a prolific writer and an award-winning photographer and one of his passions is contributing travel essays and photographic work to Chinese magazines. He now lives happily in Beijing.