Hsiao-Hung Pai (白晓红), a Chinese and English language journalist and writer, was born in Taiwan and came to Britain in 1991. She has spent years researching the working lives of undocumented Chinese migrant workers in Britain, even going undercover so as to better understand their plight. Her first book, Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour (Penguin, April 2008), was shortlisted for the 2009 Orwell Book Prize. In Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants (Verso, August 2012), she continued her investigation into the lives of Chinese workers, this time as outsiders in their homeland. Nick Broomfield’s film, Ghosts, was based on her work. She is currently working on an ethnographic study of the working lives of migrant sex workers in the UK, to be published in 2013.