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Teng Qian Xi grew up in Australia and Singapore, and majored in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She started translating literary texts from Chinese to English when she realised that Singaporean Chinese-language poets deserved a bigger audience, and that the translation process was exhilarating.

Her translations of Singaporean poet Tan Chee Lay‟s poems have appeared in Some Kind of Beautiful Signal (Two Lines Press, 2010), and online journal Asymptote (asymptotejournal.com, 2011), together with essays on the poems and the translation process. She presented some of her translations of Singapore poets Tan Chee Lay and Chiu Wei-li at Kaihua-jieguo zai Haiwai: International Conference of the Literatures of the Chinese Diaspora, organised by University of California (Berkeley), held in 2002. She is currently working on translating an edition of selected poems by Tan Chee Lay.

Qian Xi‟s poetry collection, They hear salt crystallising, was one of four nominees for the English- language category of the Singapore Literature Prize in 2012. Her poetry has been published in literary journals such as Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Softblow (Singapore), Columbia Magazine (New York), Mudlark (USA), and Slope (USA). Her poetry has also been featured in anthologies including Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writing, (Penguin, India, 2009); Language for A New Century: Contemporary Voices from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W. W. Norton, USA 2008); Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia (Ethos Books, Singapore 2007) and New Poems on the Underground (Orion Publishing Group, London 2004).

She has taught creative writing workshops at writing camps, as well as English-language literature at several schools in Singapore. She is currently based in Singapore, working as a private tutor specialising in GCE A-level Literature and General Paper.