Hessler is honest about problems the students-particularly the female students-face. This teaches the students to think for themselves, but it also teaches Hessler lifelong lessons about a China few get to experience. He asks the students for their opinions on economic and political policies and revolution, and he enjoys debating with them. He watches students wrestle with conflicting ideas and look at the future as something they can shape for themselves instead of a forced doctrine. Fuling is on the brink of reform, and Hessler feels privileged to be there. The students teach Hessler more about China and the realities of rural life than he can ever teach them about literature.

The young people follow Communist Party teachings although they now question them, and Hessler describes how fascinating it is to see how this affects their interpretations of American and English writings. This is a China where young people don’t plan their own futures and instead await job assignments from the central planning bureaucracy. However, punishments for third and fourth children are more severe-families may have their houses burned down. At the time, the students are familiar with doctrines such as China’s one-child policy, and they tell him how their parents pay fines for any siblings. These are students who want to learn and expand their horizons. He teaches English and American literature at a local college, and he’s welcomed although his ideologies are completely different from the students there. When Hessler arrives in Fuling, it’s the first time the city has an American resident in decades. Like the rest of China, Fuling is undergoing many changes, and Hessler’s book explores the tensions between remaining true to the past and fear for the future. Fuling is a small city close to the Yangtze River and is known for a quiet, rural way of life. Hessler first visits Fuling on a Peace Corps teaching assignment in 1996, and it’s during this time that he journals what life in Fuling is like.

Fuling, Sichuan, is part of the Chongqing municipality.

He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he’s a contributing writer for National Geographic.

At the time the book was published, Hessler served as Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker. It was published by Harper in 2001 and won the Kiriyama Prize for Nonfiction in the same year. It’s the first book in Hessler’s China trilogy and describes his journey through Fuling, China and the changes this river town is going through. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze is a travel memoir by American writer and journalist Peter Hessler.

Rivertown peter hessler