From the perspective of six years in Beijing (1986-1992), Kretschmer offers a lively account of how American Foreign Experts go berserk in China, how they gradually adjust to Chinese culture, and how they eventually acquire a unique bicultural vision of the world. Kretschmer combines entertaining sketches of the bumbling China Thumb with penetrating glimpses of the population policy at work. He addresses issues related to the function and purpose of education, economics, democracy, and a free press in China and at home. Kretschmer is particularly sensitive to culturally conceived mythologies of reality and how they differ for Chinese and Americans. A Renaissance scholar with an extensive background in cross-cultural experience and broad-ranging interests, Kretschmer serves the reader a Chinese banquet of thought-provoking observation about their culture and ours.