River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.)
by:
Peter Hessler (author)
A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change...
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A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780060855024 (0060855029)
Publish date: April 25th 2006
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 402
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
History,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Asian Literature,
Asia,
Biography Memoir,
China
Interesting and well written, but some sections could have been tightened. The author spent two years (1996-1998) as a Peace Corp volunteer in Fuling, China. It is a remote town located in the Yangtze River Valley, in the heartland of the Sichuan province. He taught English, he learned Chinese and t...
Hessler, already a published travel writer in his late 20's, set out for a two-year stint in Sichuan as a college English literature instructor for the Peace Corps. Here he describes his two years and gradual acculturation. Hessler neither vilifies nor romanticizes the people with whom he interacts,...
One of the very good books about China which is based at a time just before the phase of rapid progress. Simply written, humorous at times and very insightful.