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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.
Sommario
Introduction
From China Thumb to World Hand: Stages of Transformation
Mythic Reality: The Chamber That Controls the Sea
Through a Glass, Darkly: The Chinese and the American National Mythoi
After Tiananmen Square
Facing the Future: Population
Facing the Future: Education
Facing the Future: Economics
Conclusion
Bibliographic Essay
Index
Info autore
F. A. Kretschmer has a PhD in French Renaissance literature from New York University. He is currently a Foreign Expert in the Department of English at Union University/Beijing Institute of Tourism. He has taught at the Universite de Strasbourg (as a Fulbright Teaching Fellow), and at the University of Connecticut, City University of New York, New York University, and Dalhousie University, and has written a number of books on language learning and cross-cultural studies.
