An American Teacher in China: Coping with Cultures

(Hardback)

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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.

Reviews

"Kretschmer's is a valuable and likeable addition to the chorus of opinions on modern China and how Americans can go about understanding it. As a scholar of European comparative literature who went to teach in Beijing, he sees the play of global culture and Chinese modernization. He has the strengths of both the non-sectarian amateur and the informed expert; he is without the unaware sentimentality of the enthusiast or the callused partiality of the specialist. This is an approachable but not shallow book, to be recommended to both the intelligent general reader and the China specialist."-Charles W. Hayford Northwestern University

Author Bio

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.