about me

Aventurina King (aka : I) was born in France in 1986, just outside of Chinatown (fateful coincidence, as you will soon see.) My parents being both of Anglo-saxon origin (Father, an English man who collects ancient glass, and mother, an American artist/architect), I picked up the habit of speaking English at home, while communicating in French during my fifteen or so years in French public schools.
In high school, I spent my weekends teaching myself HTML and Flash, and reading the odd Italian or German classic. In philosophy class, if the teacher was magnanimous enough to forget about me, I would sit in the back row and draw.
The same week I turned 17, I received my Baccalaureat diploma (math specialty) and three months later, left for the United States to begin my undergraduate studies at Columbia University.

It was then that my romance with the Chinese language began. Writing characters was hypnotically soothing, and I wanted to understand what my Chinese kungfu classmates--I took weekly classes in France--were snickering at behind my back. My love of Chinese dragged me to Taiwan in a Chinese language program.

The program offered two hours a day of Chinese. I filled the rest of those lulling summer hours with my first internship in a local English language newspaper, The China Post. In the second day at the newspaper, from intern, I became the publication’s sole arts reporter. Attending Chinese press conferences devoid of English language material was daunting, but it catalyzed my Chinese learning.
The year I returned from China marked the first step of my ongoing collaboration with the New York Times: a feature piece on a Taiwanese opera troupe interpreting Macbeth (click here for article.) The summer after, I returned to China again, but this time to Beijing. I had planned nothing but improvisation for those three months. I taught English, designed websites, wrote the occasional piece for the China Daily, became a founding editor of China's Rolling Stone magazine, and landed a job as “international publicity manager” in the private Chinese film production company, Huayi Brothers Pictures (website: www.hbpictures.com.)
For nine months, I wrote film publicity, translated scripts, travelled from one international film festival to another and weathered the Chinese corporate environment.

I have now just graduated from college. Glancing back on my tajectory, I see I have left no opportunity unexplored. After surviving the Chinese company experience, I came back the United States and continued pursuing my creative freelance work. I spent my Chinese corporate savings on a Canon Rebel Xti (hence the photography section of this website). A few different newspapers and magazines including the Asia Times, the South China Morning Post, and Neu Magazine published my work.
I was blessed with a research job and a fabulous mentor when New Yorker writer Tom Reiss hired me to help with his new book, a biography of the General Dumas. My Chinese skills landed me an editing position with the next Oxford Chinese-English dictionary. Last summer, I travelled back to China and began freelancing for Wired Magazine's website.