Vincent Goossaert is deputy director of the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris. He is the author of The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics, among other books.

David A. Palmer is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and fellow of the Centre for Anthropological Research at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, among other books.