With China's Open Door Policy and economic reforms after 1978, private business was allowed to rise and become a vital social and economic factor. This anthropological study follows the community of private business households (geti hu) in Chengdu, Sichuan, from 1987 to 1991. Bruun gives an account of the people, their private businesses, and their relationship with bureacracy in a small neighborhood within a contemporary Chinese urban area. He looks at the effect of fundamental Chinese values and ideologies on business and bureaucracy.