Colin Thomas Flahive grew up in Denver, Colorado, and graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with degrees in anthropology and Asian studies. He first came to China in 1998 as a backpacker, later returned to study, and moved to Yunnan in 2002.Now based in Kunming, he has lived in southwest China for more than twenty years. He runs four restaurants, raises a family, and has built a long term life in a region shaped by constant change. Living and working in Yunnan has strongly influenced how he observes place, culture, and everyday experience.Flahive is also the author of three works of fiction and one work of nonfiction including Great Leaps: Finding Home in a Changing China which examined rural to urban migration and the forces driving China's rapid modernization. In many ways, The Galaxy's Last Ride returns to the same questions at a later moment, when movement and development have begun shifting back toward the countryside.