About the cast:

Half Chinese and half Bai, one of 26 minority groups in Yunnan Province of Southwestern China, Jun Li 李珺 (Bauhinia) received her acting and dance training at the Kunming Art School and Yunnan Art School and became a principal dancer at the Kunming Singing and Dancing Ensemble upon graduation. During the 90's, she was active in Beijing and Guanzhou both as a dancer and as an actress. Li has appeared in more than 15 Chinese mini-series, including lead roles in "Of Mirror and Flowers" and "The Story of Zheng Ban Qiao." As a featured dancer in national extravaganzas, Li has performed in Japan, Germany, France and Russia. Li came to the US in early 2000 and made her dance debut at the " Light of the Millennium" concert at the Queens Theater. She made her New York acting debut in "The Legend of White Snake" at the West End Theater. Her other theatre credits include "The Butterfly Dream" at the Bank Street Theatre and "The Chinese Mermaid," a dance drama, at the Downtown Pace Theatre. She works closely with her older sister Yi-ling Li.

Shing Ka 賈勝 (Jack) moved to the US from Hong Kong at the age of 10. He studied Finance and Marketing at New York's Baruch College. After working as a banker, stock broker and a real estate agent, he decided to pursue acting full time -- 15 years after he first appeared as a gang member in Michael Cimino's The Year of the Dragon. He trained at the Lee Strasberg's Theatre Institute, interned for one year at the Actor's Studio in NY, and worked briefly as an assistant stage manager for Al Pacino. Ka's film credits include "Pot Luck" and "Made in China." His TV credits include "Guiding Light" and "Mayor of Oyster Bay." His theatre work includes a one-man presentation of the entire Biblical Book of Jonah for Vision Productions. Shing Ka recently hosted a Benefit Concert for the 9/11 attacks, "Standing for Freedom," organized by the New York International TV and Media Corp.

Yiling Li 李依凌 (interviewee) was trained in dance at Kunming Dancing School and in directing at Yunnan Arts College. She received further training in musical theater at the Central Academy of Dramatic Arts in Beijing. Li has won many dancing awards, including that of National Ethnic Dance Competition in Beijing. She has worked as a TV host at stations in Guanzhou and Beijing. As an actress, she appeared in lead roles in many China Central TV's mini-series, including "Blood of Umeng Hill," "A Hui," and "My Land, My God, My People." Yiling Li was a featured actress in "The Cat Dreaming to be Human" at the Four Seasons Theater in Tokyo. She came to the US in 1999 and made her New York stage debut in the title role of "The Legend of the White Shake." She has appeared in many productions together with her younger sister Jun Li.

Chan Ping Chiu 陳炳釗 (school friend), a graduate of Hong Kong's Academy for the Performing Arts, has been an active theatre director -- mostly for his own Chan Ping Chiu Projects -- and theatre educator in Hong Kong for the past decade. His many directorial credits include "Metamorphosis" and "La Vie Gaie." In 2001, Chan received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to visit New York for theatre research.

Elizabeth Summerlin (Liz) has been acting for over 10 years, primarily in theatre. She has performed to critical acclaim in Alabama, Boston and New York. Her latest endeavors have been one-woman theatrical presentations. Her first solo outing is about a woman who marries herself, and the second is a biographical piece about the 20th century's greatest woman athlete, Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

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About the filmmakers:

Mai Iskander (director of photography), a graduate from New York University's Film School, worked as an assistant to Miroslav Ondricekn on a number of Milos Forman and Penny Marshall movies. Among her recent film credits are "Too Much Sleep" by David Maquiling and "Ashbury Park," a documentary that features Bruce Springsteen and Danny De Vito.

The film credits of Gill Wong 黃知敏 (production & costume designer), a former art director and designer at Sony Music in New York City after graduation from the School of Visual Arts, include Bryan Chang's "After the Crescent" (1998) and "Among the Stars" (2000), Evans Chan's "The Map of Sex and Love"(2001), Jacob Cheung's "Midnight Fly" (2001), which received a Best Costume Design nomination at the Taiwan Golden Horse Awards ,and Yau Ching's Let's Love Hong Kong" (2002). Ms. Wong is also an actress, who plays May in "Bauhinia."

Sebian-American composer Milos Raickovich studied with Messiaen and David Del Tredici. He taught for a year in Hiroshima, formed his own ensemble in Belgrade, and served as a conductor at the Belgrade Opera and Ballet Theatre. L.A. Times music critic Mark Swed described Raickovich's "New Classicism" (title of a recording released by Mode) style as a "unique post-modern response to both Minimalism and multiculturalism." "El Contorno," the film music he wrote for Evans Chan's "The Map of Sex and Love" was nominated for the Best Original Score at the 2001 Taiwan Golden Horse Film Festival. His "Sonata for Piano" (1990) was performed by Nancy Loo 羅乃新, Juilliard-trained and Hong Kong's preeminent classical pianist, especially for "Bauhinia."

Garret Sokoloff, who has co-edited with Evans Chan on Chan's "Journey to Beijing," and "The Map of Sex and Love," is a free-lance video editor in New York.