The Short Story

"Take your broken heart, make it into art,"
Carrie Fisher.

Christina is an award-winning Australian-Chinese writer and photographer, and founder. She is the author of Unbreakable: The Warren Randall Story (September 2026), a 364-page commissioned biography and coffee table book about Australia’s trailblazing winemaker and entrepreneur and the former chief eater at The Hungry Australian food and travel blog. She is currently creating products, tools, services, and content projects across multiple formats to help change the conversation about ADHD and help people with interest-driven minds rewrite their story.

Christina has been a professional writer since the mid 90s. She has contributed hundreds of commissioned articles to local, national and international print and online publications including China Daily, Jetstar Magazine, Tiger Tales and About.com. She has also worked in development on original scripted drama TV series for Disney+, the ABC and SBS, as a food and travel writer and editor, and as a sub editor at a London publishing company. For her screenwriting, she was awarded a 2023 Varuna Fellowship, shortlisted for the 2022 $80,000 SBS SA Emerging Screenwriters’ Incubator, and selected for the 2022 AFTRS Talent Camp SA.

Christina’s food & travel blog, The Hungry Australian, was the national winner of the Australian Writers’ Center’s Best Australian Blogs 2014 competition out of 1,100+ entries. She also won the Outstanding Use of Photography award in the same competition the previous year for her story on Dubai’s souks. In 2016, Apple came calling, asking Christina/The Hungry Australian to be featured in their Australian campaigns for their iPad, iPad Mini, IPad Air, and iPad Pro.

In 2015, Christina was one of three photographers commissioned to document 130+ restaurants and wineries for a 462-page coffee table book, Flavours of South Australia, for Smudge Publishing. It won gold in the International Book Awards.

Outside of her creative work, Christina has worked in senior leadership, marketing, and corporate development roles in Australia, the UK and China. She was executive director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, helping Australians doing business with China, an Asialink arts management fellow at the Hong Kong Fringe Club, marketing director of Makers Empire, an education technology company used by 3.5+ million users in 50+ countries, and corporate development manager of London’s South Bank Centre, Europe’s largest arts centre.

The Longer Story

G'day! I was born in Adelaide, South Australia, to a Tiger Mum from Hong Kong and an easy-going dad from Malaysia, who had both moved to Australia as overseas students in the 1960s. Australia was very different then; Australia had only one Asian restaurant at the time. Growing up caught between cultures was confusing — I wanted to be Olivia Newton-John in Grease when I was growing up — but working in Asia helped me to understand that I would always feel like an outsider and that what I thought were my weaknesses were actually strengths.

I completed a BA (Chinese) and Grad. Dip. in Anthropology at Adelaide University and a Grad. Dip. in Management (Arts) at UniSA. I started writing in my teens because I thought writers were the coolest people and I wanted an excuse to meet my favourite bands. I got into publicity and marketing because I stuck my hand up when my singing group (Before You Were Blonde) needed a publicist. Both led to my first paid jobs as co-editor-in-chief at On Dit, Adelaide University’s student newspaper and publicity & marketing coordinator at Carclew Youth Arts Centre. On the side, I also managed my brother’s indie-pop band, Brunatex, which was nominated for Best Unsigned Act at the national Music Industry Critics Association awards.

After university, I headed overseas. I spent 13 years working in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Leeds and Melbourne in the arts, not-for-profit, business, and media industries in senior marketing and development roles. As executive director of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, which helps Australians doing business with China, I sat on the board of directors, and led the organisation through a period of record growth, tripling corporate membership and doubling the number of keynote, business and training events. I also ate my way around big cities and small villages whenever possible.

During my extended maternity leave, I started a food and travel blog, The Hungry Australian. This led to a full-time career for many years as a food and travel writer, recipe developer, photographer, presenter, and blogger. During this time, I worked with numerous Australian and international F&B brands, media outlets and tourism boards. My work took me all over Australia as well as South Africa, Dubai, and Turkey. Apple also came calling, featuring The Hungry Australian in their Australian advertising campaigns for the iPad, iPad Mini, IPad Air, and iPad Pro.

My writing has been published in numerous local, national and global print and online publications including Jetstar Magazine, Tiger Tales, That’s Shanghai, 8 Days, The China Daily, The Adelaide Review, Honest Cooking, Adelaide Dining Magazine, Aspire, About.com, She Knows, Rip It Up, dB and Sumptuous. My recipes and photography have been featured in Elle, She Knows, Woman’s Day, Gourmet, Elle Decor, Food & Home Entertaining (South Africa), The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Apartment Therapy, In Daily, The Kitchn, and KidSpot.

In 2017, I retired from blogging to focus on other creative and family projects. I also began working with my brother’s education technology company, Makers Empire, as its marketing director. I helped scale the company to 3.5+ million users in 50 countries before leaving Makers Empire in 2025 to pursue other work opportunities.

In mid 2025, at the age of 49, I was diagnosed with ADHD, six weeks after my ex-husband’s funeral, and two to three months after we’d learned — separately — that we both likely had ADHD. This prompted a deep dive into researching ADHD to learn why we’d both been missed. What I discovered was upsetting and unacceptable, so I am currently working on digital tools, books and content products to help change the global conversation around ADHD and make it more recognisable.

I live in Adelaide, Australia, with my patient husband, a hormonal teenage son, an unimpressed 20YO daughter, and a delightful labradoodle named General Iroh.

(c)  All text and photographs by Christina Soong 2013-2026. Photographs may not be reproduced without permission. Please contact me for republication and licensing rights.