This book is a personal saga of woe and intrigue. It recounts a seemingly endless succession of false starts, missteps, detours, dead ends, and disappointments, endured over five years, in the ultimately successful pursuit of a sponsoring unit in the People's Republic of China, for a research project on the rural industrial and artisanal enterprises of Dongyang country, Zhejiang Province. We follow author Cooper in his veritable Confucian perambulation from ministry to ministry, bureau to bureau, institute to institute, academy to academy, office to office, university to university, until he finally manages to reach a quid pro quo with Zhejiang University. Under that agreement, the project would be carried out in collaboration with Professor Jiang Yinhuo of the department of economics. The trials, tribulations and humiliations Cooper and Jiang suffered under the close supervision of the county Foreign Affairs and Public Security Offices while they gathered their 'data' over two field seasons, are described in detail.