Donald R. DeGlopper is a member of the staff of the Far Eastern Law Division, Law Library, Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He has taught anthropology and Asian Studies at Cornell and Yale Universities, and been a visiting fellow of the Contemporary China Centre, the Australian National University.

Based on anthropological fieldwork in Lukang, an old seaport in Taiwan, this book examines the city's history, economic structure, and social organization. It addresses such matters as an annual rock fight between the city's major clans, the way votes are bought in local elections, and why the inhabitants of a fairly large industrial and commercial city describe it as a cozy community where everyone knows everyone else. The book uses the framework of a community study to address such large questions as the adequacy of Confucianism as model for Chinese society, the nature of Chinese social organization beyond the realm of the family and kinship, and the structure of Chinese cities rather than villages. The argument of the book is propelled by a set of intellectual puzzles concerning the disjunctions, if not contradictions, between the structure of Chinese society or the city of Lukang and the ways the members of that society talk about their society and their own places in it.