Mark Salzman

Who is Mark Salzman?

Mark Joseph Salzman is an American writer. Salzman is best known for his 1986 memoir Iron & Silk, which describes his experiences living in China as an English teacher in the early 1980s.

Salzman grew up in Ridgefield, Conn., the oldest child of a piano teacher mother and a social worker father. He studied Chinese Language and Literature at Yale University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude in 1982 and spent the next two years in Changsha, Hunan teaching English at Hunan Medical College and studying martial arts with Pan Qingfu, a Chinese martial arts teacher and kung fu movie actor. His experiences in China are recounted in his first book, Iron & Silk: A young American encounters swordsmen, bureaucrats and other citizens of contemporary China, published in 1986. Salzman received several literary awards for Iron & Silk. The book was made into a 1990 film of the same title. Salzman wrote the screenplay and starred as himself in the film. Though the real venue of the story was in Changsha, the film was shot in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.