"I came to this book with a jaundiced eye. I found it pretentious for the author to use a Chinese pseudonym and presumptuous to declare in the blurb on the back cover that "most people get China wrong, [sic] I want to set the record straight." At times while I read it, I wasn't even sure if the author was taking himself seriously as a commentator on contemporary China. In this regard, at one point he hopes that his "subtle hints may awaken an epiphany with [his Chinese students." It was even hard to pin down the genre of this book. Is it a memoir or a travel guide? It read more like the journal he kept and apparently slapped together without enough editing (he credits an unnamed editor). Withing the same chapter, he abruptly jumps from long historical background information to something anecdotal. Whether he does this because he assumes his reader is a novice on Chinese history or because he enjoys playing the role of historian is not altogether clear. Unfortunately, he often strays into the persuasive mode, as if he were writing an essay, and this sometimes leads to a soft rant about a tangential topic, as when discussing Chinese students studying in the U.S.

For all his professed empathy for Chinese and efforts to avoid stereotyping them, he does in fact engage unwittingly in some Orientalist discourse. One glaring example: "The Chinese saw themselves as part of a whole and did not view themselves through the individual's eyes, as Americans did." Talk about a sweeping generalization (and one that came on the heels of describing an "always-cynical" friend of his, no less). It is all part of the binary trap he finds himself in, as when he declares "They are most certainly not like us"--a form of othering. Another example: "I came to the conclusion that Chinese people did not think like Westerners." Then, sadly, their is the occasional blanket statement of condemnation: "One cannot overstate the level of subterfuge and intrigue that exists in China at every level by every person." This observation takes the pernicious "inscrutable" trope notion to a whole new level. He also has this (again) presumptuous habit of passing along insights as if he were the first to make them. Sometimes these are unintentionally humorous, as when he compares Chinese to Western toilets. More often, they are just annoying. One particular gem: "The biggest mistake one can make is trying to understand another culture by looking at it through one's own culture." Aside from being painfully obvious, I would argue that even if one considers oneself an insider, a degree of outsider status is unavoidable. Even his praise for Chinese is often backhanded, as when he admits that they can help one another but only after enumerating the ways in which they do not.

To be fair, if the prospective reader is traveling to China for an extended period of time, or plans to teach or otherwise work there, this book might be worth a read (i.e., it does detail a lot of cultural peculiarities), but only if one does not accept all its observations at face value."