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River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 · rating details · 4,461 ratings · 557 reviews

In the heart of China's Sichuan province lies the small city of Fuling. Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. As the people of Fuling hold on to the China they know, they are also opening up and struggling to adapt to a world in which their fate is uncertain.

Fuling's position at the crossroads came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. He found himself teaching English and American literature at the local college, discovering how Shakespeare and other classics look when seen through the eyes of students who have been raised in the Sichuan countryside and educated in Communist Party doctrine. His students, though, are the ones who taught him about the ways of Fuling � and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society.

As he learns the language and comes to know the people, Hessler begins to see that it is indeed a unique moment for Fuling. In its past is Communist China's troubled history � the struggles of land reform, the decades of misguided economic policies, and the unthinkable damage of the Cultural Revolution � and in the future is the Three Gorges Dam, which upon completion will partly flood thecity and force the resettlement of more than a million people. Making his way in the city and traveling by boat and train throughout Sichuan province and beyond, Hessler offers vivid descriptions of the people he meets, from priests to prostitutes and peasants to professors, and gives voice to their views. This is both an intimate personal story of his life in Fuling and a colorful, beautifully written account of the surrounding landscape and its history. Imaginative, poignant, funny, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

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Paperback, 432 pages

Published April 25th 2006 by Harper Perennial (first published January 23rd 2001)

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Apr 14, 2007 Anna rated it 1 of 5 stars

this was the one of MANY peace corps memoirs i suffered through (reading material choices were limited to our paltry communal bookshelves in the volunteer lounge of the swaziland peace corps office).
anyway, i used to write a monthly literature review box or our volunteer newsletter, and one month i ranted about this genre. below are my thoughts:

Dissecting the Peace Corps Memoir
One of my least favorite genres of nonfiction is hands-down the “peace corps memoir.” I attribute it to both the f...more this was the one of MANY peace corps memoirs i suffered through (reading material choices were limited to our paltry communal bookshelves in the volunteer lounge of the swaziland peace corps office).
anyway, i used to write a monthly literature review box or our volunteer newsletter, and one month i ranted about this genre. below are my thoughts:

Dissecting the Peace Corps Memoir
One of my least favorite genres of nonfiction is hands-down the “peace corps memoir.” I attribute it to both the fact that I am a volunteer myself, and thus more critical of the actual content. And then probably due to the sheer volume that I read, I’m picky about writing, appreciating only good prose. More often then not, I feel like returned volunteers have good stories to tell and get book contracts for these stories without actually possessing the literary training or raw talent to pull them off. Even the most talented editors couldn’t fix these calamities.
Just to prove that it doesn’t matter how bad of a writer you are, as long as your granddaddy is famous you can get a book deal, Jason Carter’s Power Lines is an embarrassment to his Duke education. Stylistically, his sentences and paragraphs fall flat, lacking cohesion. And grammatically, he leaves the reader reaching for her copy of Strunk & White. The award for most frustrating goes to Susana Herrera whose Mango Elephants in the Sun made me want to jab blunt objects into my eye sockets as I waded through nonsensical odes to lizards and out of place poems. I couldn’t tell if she wanted the reader to feel sorry for her or be envious. I suppose in the end it didn’t matter because I felt neither. I found Sarah Erdman’s Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, one of the newest in the genre, to be nauseatingly pretentious and self-congratulatory. From a literary standpoint, the lack of coherent theme or message was disappointing. As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, Geneva Sander’s The Gringo Brought His Mother is ridiculously absurd. It’s a memoir written by a volunteer’s mother after a month-long trip to visit her son. The mother is completely nutty and paints a pathetic portrait of her son; then again whose mother actually writes a peace corps memoir ?!?! Moritz Thomsen’s Living Poor was mind-numbingly boring and topped only by Peter Hessler’s River Town. Hessler’s was so dull that even Kelly (training director) couldn’t finish it. And in the “who cares” category is Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery’s Dear Exile, a collection of letters the two friends wrote back and forth during Montgomery’s service (Liftin was stateside). The reader is treated to a nearly constant string of Montgomery’s complaints to her friend about rural village life in Kenya. It’s very hard to muster up sympathy for her bouts of diarrhea when I (and all the other volunteers in Swaziland) still heroically troop to the pit latrine through thick and thin.
It’s not, however, a complete waste of a genre. Two gems sparkle in the rough including Mike Tidwell’s The Ponds of Kalambayi. Tidwell does not shy away from his own shortcomings and writes candidly of his own vices and addictions. His clear and concise prose paints a vivid and enthralling picture of the fisheries program in Zaire.
And then there is George Parker’s The Village of Waiting. The first memoir to take a critical look at post-colonial class, race, and culture issues that surround the Peace Corps experience. Not only is Parker’s writing heads above the best (he’s a Pushcart Prize winning writer whose work has appeared in Harper’s, Dissent, and The New York Times), he’s also brutally honest about his work as white western volunteer living in an African village, acknowledging the inherent problems and paradoxes....less...more
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Mar 23, 2013 Peter rated it 3 of 5 stars

A good friend recommended this book to me after hearing of my interest in learning more about opportunities for Americans to volunteer in international settings.

The story of Peter Hessler’s two year stint (1996-1998?) as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling (pop. 200,000) in the Sichuanese hinterlands of China , teaching English at a state-sponsored school to the next generation of Chinese teachers of the English language, reads a bit like a China-based “To Sir with Love.”

It may lack some of the dr...more A good friend recommended this book to me after hearing of my interest in learning more about opportunities for Americans to volunteer in international settings.

The story of Peter Hessler’s two year stint (1996-1998?) as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling (pop. 200,000) in the Sichuanese hinterlands of China , teaching English at a state-sponsored school to the next generation of Chinese teachers of the English language, reads a bit like a China-based “To Sir with Love.”

It may lack some of the drama and character development that I remember from the movie starring Sidney Poitier, but many of the cultural issues Hessler encountered are similar: living life as an “outsider” in a homogenous society; the daily anxieties that derive from not being able to communicate with others at the level to which one is accustomed and the glacially slow but gradual gaining of acceptance that occurs via the accrual of daily actions and conversations that build trust.

However, in addition, Hessler had to struggle with an entirely new and difficult language as well as a Communist Party orthodoxy that stifles the imagination and creativity of his students, and carefully scripts what subjects he is “permitted” to teach and discuss.

Admirably, through a creative series of routine homework assignments, and by leveraging his deft political skill and humor, Hessler is able to communicate to his students some of the most fundamentally important differences in Chinese and American society, as well as other aspects of interest to them; despite the significant hurdles placed in his way. Kudos to him for the significant effort he makes to accomplish this and for his achievements.

Yes, at times, I was a bit bored. The format is more journal than novel, and it's therefore hard for the author to develop any kind of momentum. But ultimately, the unique strength and primary value of this book is in the way Hessler chronicles China – its people, history and a very specific region – in a brief period of time just prior to certain massive changes that were forthcoming: the completion of the Three Gorges Dam; the destruction the newly-created lake will bring to the eternal villages and cities resident in the lower river valley and the new buildings, roadways and railways being constructed at breakneck speed in the upper towns and cities along the Yangtze.

I particularly enjoyed the book for cultural insights like the fact that the Chinese are huge admirers of Mark Twain, the sense of how one passes time in a Chinese river town and the relationships Hessler forges with diverse characters like a local priest and a restaurant entrepreneur.

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Jul 07, 2012 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

For those who think this book is incredibly dull, I must say, I don't think it was intended to be a work of entertainment. It often reads like a personal journal, which can be both charming and a chore. If you're patient, I think you'll find it reasonably pleasant to settle in and listen to Peter Hessler tell his story.

For those who say that Peter Hessler is a conceited jerk ... mmm, I don't buy that. He makes observations about how rude and petty many of the Chinese people are, and he also fre...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Andrew Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

chased down hessler's china books after reading the ridiculously good new yorker piece about the druggist in colorado: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...

more than anything what i appreciated about this book is that it reads as fundamentally honest. sometimes hessler is his better self; at others he's irritated and judgmental as he adjusts to the country. he doesn't sugarcoat his perceptions or cast his behavior as particularly heroic. over time, he revisits opinions.

reading a mid-90s narr...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essaysjournalism

Halfway through River Town, I can't help but observe that Pete Hessler was just 27 when he arrived to teach English for the Peace Corp in Fuling, the town on which his memoir/travelogue is based. My favourite books are like this, I can't help but see blurred reflections of myself in them. I wish I'd read Hessler before I went to China for exchange in 2002, but I try to forgive myself the immaturity at that stage; after all I was just 21 then. It seems so old, though, 21, after NS, and compared t...more Halfway through River Town, I can't help but observe that Pete Hessler was just 27 when he arrived to teach English for the Peace Corp in Fuling, the town on which his memoir/travelogue is based. My favourite books are like this, I can't help but see blurred reflections of myself in them. I wish I'd read Hessler before I went to China for exchange in 2002, but I try to forgive myself the immaturity at that stage; after all I was just 21 then. It seems so old, though, 21, after NS, and compared to how adult 21-year olds seem when you read about them in books about developing countries. 27-year old Hessler seems so intelligent about travel, so able to observe the surroundings and people and himself at the same time - perhaps a function of his literature/anthropology background at Princeton. I turn 27 in just over a month, and River Town makes me wonder about whether I'm as mature a reporter as he is. I'm no longer a reporter, to be sure, but I think of it less as a profession than as a way of being, a mode of living, of openness at a personal level, and of penetrating different niches of experience and observing and thinking through them, eventually perhaps writing about them.

In any case, here's a comment he makes deep into the book, which I think is so quintessentially journalistic. He's describing how he tried to use English to broach sensitive political topics with his students when he first arrived, and failed, but later, as he picked up Chinese, managed to do so.

"At last I realised that the fear wasn't of somebody else hearing. It was a question of comfort, because uncertain topics were more easily handled in their native language. But also I sensed that the true fear was of themselves: virtually all the limits had been established in their own minds. English had been learnt at school, and thus is was indistinguishable from the educational system and its political regulations... it was a school language, a waiguoren language, and in both contexts they had been trained to think and speak carefully."

More immediate than a historian would write, and more observational than a fiction writer would dictate, I think.

And elsewhere, later, just because I like this observation and not because its espescially poetic or anything: Of his students, he writes "They were tough and sweet and funny and sad, and people like that would always survive." I wonder about that.

On the whole, though, I'd say Oracle Bones - his second book, based on his later years in China as a freelance feature writer and New Yorker correspondent - is better written. He's perfected the feature magazine pace by then, the break in tone and subject, the circling back to subjects, the timed-release of detail, vital to the story like blood from a drip. River Town is more straightforward, less polished, his descriptions ramble more, but in that sense its also more poetic - a scene ends and you're not sure what the point is, because there is no point, its perhaps simply the writing down of a memory, and there is more in that than can be summarised into a point.(less)

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Oct 14, 2007 Mr. Brammer rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like overwrought prose

Several people I know have read and raved about this book, it's gotten across-the-board good reviews from respected publications, so I started "River Town" with high expectations. Why, then, do I think this book is so terrible? Mainly I find Hessler's writing style grating and pretentious. He makes sure to mention early on that he went to Princeton and Oxford (and reminds us a couple times afterwards), even though it was totally irrelevant to the narrative, and his descriptions of the Sichuan co...more

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Sep 10, 2007 Hallie Taylor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction_read

Since writing this book, Peter Hessler has established himself as one of the premier journalists writing about life in China today. You'll find his pieces in the New Yorker and the Atlantic. River Town is well worth reading. It is an introspective memoir of his first two years of living in somewhat rural China and is also very well written.

I met two of Peter Hessler's Peace Corps comrades in 1996 or 1997 in Xishuangbanna. I remember them telling me about their experiences and frustrations worki...more

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Aug 10, 2008 Zinger rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

I enjoyed this book because it gave the reader a perspective of being an outsider in China. I was impressed at how well the author controlled his frustrations due to the Orwellian history and propaganda from the communist party. As fascinating as China is, I don't think I could have handled living there as long as he did under those conditions (and those conditions are nowhere as bad as they had been in the past).

I also enjoyed the descriptions of the personal friendships he made with some of th...more

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May 29, 2013 E Wilson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a great book,entertaining and educational. The author did his best to understand his students,the people of the relatively small Chinese city where he taught, and the political climate.

It was interesting how uncomfortable he and his friend, Adam, were to be the center of attention every time they ventured onto the streets.
I guess he really found out what it is like to be instantly recognizable as an outsider.

I think the Chinese were more sympathetic than I thought they would be to an Am...more

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Mar 30, 2013 Ensiform rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: china, travel, non-fiction

A volunteer for the Peace Corps, Hessler lived in Fuling, a little town in Sichuan province, on the delta of the Yangtze and Wu rivers, for two years teaching English. As one of the few Westerners in the town since World War II, Hessler becomes the focus of not always kind attention in town, but as he learns more Chinese and more of the Chinese way of doing things, he sees his place more clearly and almost, at times, seems to fit into the daily life there. Of course, nearly everything in China i...more A volunteer for the Peace Corps, Hessler lived in Fuling, a little town in Sichuan province, on the delta of the Yangtze and Wu rivers, for two years teaching English. As one of the few Westerners in the town since World War II, Hessler becomes the focus of not always kind attention in town, but as he learns more Chinese and more of the Chinese way of doing things, he sees his place more clearly and almost, at times, seems to fit into the daily life there. Of course, nearly everything in China is political: the literature he teaches is used by his students as a springboard to analyze their own lives, even as Hessler learns how hard it is to broach certain subjects in a culture where everyone is brought up to believe the same things.

Written in calm, meditative prose, this is an excellent entry into the annals of the Westerner-in-China body of memoirs. Hessler is wise beyond his years, and his China (or rather, his Fuling) is never of the sadly typical “oh look how foreign everything is” variety. He recognizes full well how foreign he himself is, and even during his lowest points of cultural contact – when men try to pick fights with him simply because he’s a Westerner – he reports with a detached and reflective eye. He learns rather quickly how to deal with some of the illogical bureaucracy – I enjoyed his clever face-saving solution when confronted with the lie that he was required to get a chest X-ray to participate in a foot race, for example – but he is troubled and bemused by certain other aspects of Chinese culture. He cites the lack of empathy and collectivist thinking that he saw in Chinese crowds, and the disturbing lack of fixed individual values in a culture where “wrong” thinking can become “right” as easily as it takes for an authority to say it. In his own small circle of students and friends, he hears of two deaths, a suicide, and a kidnapping (of a woman to become a forced bride). Near the end of the book, he muses that he can only brush against “the slightest sense of the dizzying past” that informed the values and behaviors that he encounters. His Fuling is, as he says, “a human place,” and that puts his memoir in the top ranks of its kind. (less)

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Jan 21, 2013 Stan Vukajlovich rated it 4 of 5 stars

This a well written history of a Peace Corps Volunteer's two years as a volunteer teaching high school level English in China. As a former PCV (77-79 Malaysia) I found that Hessler did a fantastic job of capturing and describing so many of the memories and emotions that are created in such a unique setting. One of the very helpful things that he had available to aid his understanding was his access to his students journals they were required to maintain. So he could directly read what their thou...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Graham Mulligan rated it 4 of 5 stars

River Town – Two Years on the Yantze, by Peter Hessler (2001)

Reviewed by Graham Mulligan

I left a copy of this book in the apartment in Xiamen for teachers to read. The book is about the author’s 2-year stay in Fuling, Sichuan Province, in 1996-98, as part of a Peace Corps project to teach English and American literature to prospective teachers at the local Normal School. Hessler’s book is set in a city that is fated to be drowned by the rising waters of the Yangtze River, 3 Gorges dam project. I...more River Town – Two Years on the Yantze, by Peter Hessler (2001)

Reviewed by Graham Mulligan

I left a copy of this book in the apartment in Xiamen for teachers to read. The book is about the author’s 2-year stay in Fuling, Sichuan Province, in 1996-98, as part of a Peace Corps project to teach English and American literature to prospective teachers at the local Normal School. Hessler’s book is set in a city that is fated to be drowned by the rising waters of the Yangtze River, 3 Gorges dam project. It is also about Hessler’s own journey into understanding China and its people, especially in the context of that period when Reform and Opening were still very new ideas and the Hong Kong handover was taking place. The book is essentially a diary with chapters that focus on individual characters in the school culture and in the town around the school.

Hessler learns to speak Chinese and gradually begins to find more ways to enter into his surroundings through his contacts with various individuals at the school and in the town. His descriptions of teaching and school life are authentic and will be appreciated by teacher-readers of this book. Throughout the book he ‘thinks out loud’, trying to understand such things as culture shock, the political situation around him, and the Chinese way of thinking, particularly the stereotypical contrast in attitude toward the individual and the group, characterized as “the West is individualistic; the East is collective minded”.

An even more complex issue is the perceived complacency of the Chinese people. Here is what one reviewer says of this:

Chinese collectivism: This is something that not only amazes but also puzzles me and Peter has nailed it to the root. The Chinese people are often nonchalant, indifferent, and apathetic to politics, crisis or crimes. Well, according to Peter, 'as long as a pickpocket [or whatever] did not affect you personally, or affect somebody in your family, it was not your business.' So this is the usual Chinese mind-my-own-business attitude. This attitude is so implanted inveterately into the Chinese due to decades of isolation (from media and geography) and political control. I think Peter really brings it home. The consequence is a strictly standardized education system, common beliefs among the people, common reactions toward political issues, and an unchallenging submission to authority.
(Mathew M Rau)

I thoroughly recommend this book and hope you will take the time to find it and read it. Let me know what you think in the comments.
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Sep 20, 2012 Abbe added it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-library

Amazon.com Review

In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. Expecting a calm couple of years, Hessler at first does not realize the social, cultural, and personal implications of being thrust into a such radically different society. In River Town: Two Y

...more Amazon.com Review

"Few passengers disembark at Fuling ... and so Fuling appears like a break in a dream--the quiet river, the cabins full of travelers drifting off to sleep, the lights of the city rising from the blackness of the Yangtze," says Hessler. A poor city by Chinese standards, the students at the college are mainly from small villages and are considered very lucky to be continuing their education. As an English teacher, Hessler is delighted with his students' fresh reactions to classic literature. One student says of Hamlet, "I don't admire him and I dislike him. I think he is too sensitive and conservative and selfish." Hessler marvels,

You couldn't have said something like that at Oxford. You couldn't simply say: I don't like Hamlet because I think he's a lousy person. Everything had to be more clever than that ... you had to dismantle it ... not just the play itself but everything that had ever been written about it.

Over the course of two years, Hessler and Meier learn more they ever guessed about the lives, dreams, and expectations of the Fuling people.

Hessler's writing is lovely. His observations are evocative, insightful, and often poignant--and just as often, funny. It's a pleasure to read of his (mis)adventures. Hessler returned to the U.S. with a new perspective on modern China and its people. After reading River Town, you'll have one, too. --Dana Van Nest

From Publishers Weekly

In China, the year 1997 was marked by two momentous events: the death of Deng Xiaoping, the country's leader for two decades, and the return of Hong Kong after a century and a half of British rule. A young American who spent two years teaching English literature in a small town on the Yangtze, Hessler observed these events through two sets of eyes: his own and those of his alter ego, Ho Wei. Hessler sees China's politics and ceremony with the detachment of a foreigner, noting how grand political events affect the lives of ordinary people. The passing of Deng, for example, provokes a handful of thoughtful and unexpected essays from Hessler's students. The departure of the British from Hong Kong sparks a conversational "Opium War" between him and his nationalist Chinese tutor. Meanwhile, Ho Wei, as Hessler is known to most of the townspeople, adopts a friendly and unsophisticated persona that allows him to learn the language and culture of his surroundings even as Hessler's Western self remains estranged. The author conceives this memoir of his time in China as the collaborative effort of his double identity. "Ho Wei," he writes, "left his notebooks on the desk of Peter Hessler, who typed everything into his computer. The notebooks were the only thing they truly shared." Yet it's clear that, for Hessler, Ho Wei is more than a literary device: to live in China, he felt compelled to subjugate his real identity to a character role. Hessler has already been assured the approval of a select audience thanks to the New Yorker's recent publication of an excerpt. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Mar 30, 2012 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Peter Hessler, a young Peace Corps volunteer, shares his experiences teaching English literature at Fuling Teachers College in Fuling, a remote town in the Yangtze River valley. Hessler chronicles his two years in the classroom, in the community, and in the natural environment in the fashion of a documentary, but with plenty of personality showing through. He illuminates the line that must be carefully walked between teaching and opening doors and minds, versus allowing ones own background and p...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Aron rated it 2 of 5 stars

Good: Hessler does a good job of describing the character of the people he meets and the complexity of their lives. Those stories are all interesting, funny and often touching.
Bad: Hessler is an arrogant & condescending jerk who thinks he is being sensitive & understanding, but really isn׳t. I give him a discount because he was young & stupid (despite his Oxford education) when he wrote this. Nonetheless I find the book insufferable when he writes about himself which is way too much...more

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Jul 22, 2011 Gypsy Lady rated it 3 of 5 stars

399 page hard cover

Favorite quotes
Page 39
It was, as Orwell would say, a case in which words and meaning had parted company. All that mattered was that students used the correct termininology and the correct political framework as they viewed the world around them.

Page 45
For the first time I came to understand why literataure so often slides away toward politics. I had struggled with this before; at Princeton I had majored in English, and after graduation I had spent two years studying English la...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Troy Parfitt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Almost nine years to the day after a young Peter Hessler first set foot in Fuling, I floated by that remote city on the first night of a three-day Yangtze river cruise. I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. to catch a glimpse of the place I had been reading about for the past two weeks, so wrapped up had I become in Hessler's story. A vague assemblage of lights appeared and I gazed silently at the town as it gazed silently back. Then, as quickly as it had emerged, it melted into and inky, airless night. I...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Jim Leffert rated it 4 of 5 stars

Here is a sensitive and succulent, if a bit overlong, account of two years as one of the only two Westerners in a provincial town in Western China. Peter Hessler was one of two Peace Corps volunteers who were the first foreigners to live in the Szechuan town of Fuling in at least 50 years. River Town recounts Hessler’s stay in the mid-1990’s in this town on the Yangtze River, where he and his friend Adam Meier taught English language and literature to students at the local teachers college. Hess...more Here is a sensitive and succulent, if a bit overlong, account of two years as one of the only two Westerners in a provincial town in Western China. Peter Hessler was one of two Peace Corps volunteers who were the first foreigners to live in the Szechuan town of Fuling in at least 50 years. River Town recounts Hessler’s stay in the mid-1990’s in this town on the Yangtze River, where he and his friend Adam Meier taught English language and literature to students at the local teachers college. Hessler’s students were mostly the sons and daughters of peasants from the surrounding countryside, who were preparing to go back to the countryside to serve as teachers. Hessler made an effort to study Chinese and spent considerable time in the town, where he hung out with the locals.

Hessler sensitively describes the cross-cultural encounter as he and his colleague Adam try to lead the students beyond their standard polite ways of responding to teachers and literature by assigning topics and activities that elicit personal, diverse responses. For example, they had students transfer the story of Rip Van Winkle to a Chinese setting and debate topics such as “Should the US adopt a one child per family policy?” The main theme of the book is that gradually and slowly, Hessler acquired a clearer understanding of the attitudes and world view of his students, faculty and administrators, and the townspeople. He offers vivid portraits of the physical environment and scenery and of people, including a noodle shop proprietor and his family, prostitutes, artists and riverboat workers.

Not all parts are equally interesting, but in addition to the vivid portraits of individual people, I especially appreciated the vignettes of classroom interaction that illuminated his students’ attitudes and his discussion of the Chinese people’s emphasis on their collective identity, which contributes to a lack of understanding of the perspectives of ethnic minorities, such as the Moslem Uyghurs and the Tibetans.

River Town is the first of three books that Hessler has written describing his experiences in, and encounters with, China. River Town left me motivated to go on to the remaining two volumes.
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Jan 21, 2010 Tony Taylor rated it 4 of 5 stars

In the heart of Chia's Sichuan province lies the small city of Fuling. Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. As the people of Fuling hold on to th...more In the heart of Chia's Sichuan province lies the small city of Fuling. Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. As the people of Fuling hold on to the China they know, they are also opening up and struggling to adapt to a world in which their fate is uncertain.

Fuling's position at the crossroads came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. He found himself teaching English and American literature at the local college, discovering how Shakespeare and other classics look when seen through the eyes of students who have been raised in the Sichuan countryside and educated in Communist Party doctrine. His students, though, are the ones who taught him about the ways of Fuling � and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society.

As he learns the language and comes to know the people, Hessler begins to see that it is indeed a unique moment for Fuling. In its past is Communist China's troubled history � the struggles of land reform, the decades of misguided economic policies, and the unthinkable damage of the Cultural Revolution � and in the future is the Three Gorges Dam, which upon completion will partly flood thecity and force the resettlement of more than a million people. Making his way in the city and traveling by boat and train throughout Sichuan province and beyond, Hessler offers vivid descriptions of the people he meets, from priests to prostitutes and peasants to professors, and gives voice to their views. This is both an intimate personal story of his life in Fuling and a colorful, beautifully written account of the surrounding landscape and its history. Imaginative, poignant, funny, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.(less)

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Jul 03, 2011 Sara M. Watson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this in the days after we settled into our apartment in Chongqing. It was a good timing, because Hessler describes some of the same landscapes and culture in his vivid description of Fuling, not far down the Yangtze river from Chongqing. Some things he described I have been discovering myself as I explore my new neighborhood, and some things have changed dramatically since he was in Fuling in 1995-97. This book serves as useful context and recent history to inform my stay, and it also put...more

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Jun 08, 2013 Kerry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite having been written 10 years ago, I found Hessler's 'River Town' surprisingly accurate in depicting a side of life that foreigners in China do not often get to see - that off South Western China, near the rapidly developing urban city of Chongqing.
Having lived in this region myself for a year, I surprised at how much of the book I could relate to, and consequently passed this onto relatives back home, to give them an idea of what life had been like for me. Whilst being informative with...more

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Jan 13, 2012 The rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For book club.

Too dense for this time in life.

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Feb 10, 2011 Abby rated it 5 of 5 stars

I hope to one day meet Peter Hessler and thank him for this book. He writes of his life in Fuling, China, just downriver of Chongqing, where I currently reside. Though he was there in 1997 just before the great opening, the attitudes of the people he met, befriended, and fought with, are still with the people of this region today. Hessler's insight into Southwest China where the language is lispy and the weather hot allowed me to ease into my life here.

Teaching in China is a totally new world....more

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May 26, 2009 Lara rated it 4 of 5 stars

River Town is an intimate look at two years in the heart of China from the eyes of a peace corp worker teaching English. By the end of the book you know Peter, who know Fuling (the river town), and you know its people. I grew as did my understanding of the Chinese mentality and their culture; an emerging nation built upon its past and communism, and opening up to democracy to create a whole new dynamic. Below are some of the quotes I found most meaningful.

"The peasants were agressive salespeopl...more River Town is an intimate look at two years in the heart of China from the eyes of a peace corp worker teaching English. By the end of the book you know Peter, who know Fuling (the river town), and you know its people. I grew as did my understanding of the Chinese mentality and their culture; an emerging nation built upon its past and communism, and opening up to democracy to create a whole new dynamic. Below are some of the quotes I found most meaningful.

"The peasants were agressive salespeople, shouting and shoving their wares in our faces. By the third stop, I imagined the coming waters inundating the tourist walkways and their stalls, and I thought: Good. This was how I sometimes felt on bad days in Fuling, when there was a hassle on the docks and I became a sort of Chinese Noah" (Living abroad in third world situations can wear on oneself, and I have often identified with this feeling of frustation; the way he writes about it makes me laugh with understanding)

"No land is wasted, and nothing is rushed or delayed; everything has its season, and every season rests on the simple work that the peasants do with their hands. . . Human history sits heavily on the land, as it so often does in China" (So much of what has formed "Eastern culture" and seperated it from western thought is built upon the land; the experiences the people have had with the land for thousands of years)

"She smiled as she spoke, but it was the Chinese smile tha served as a mask against deeper feelings. Those smiles could hide many emotions . . . When people smiled like that, it was as if all of the emotion was wound tightly and displaced; sometimes you caught a glimpse of it in the eyes, or at the corner of a mouth" (Living in Taiwan I daily witness the ability of the people here to control their emotions; life is lived in measures)

"For the people in Fuling, the sense of self seemed largely external; you were identified by the way that others viewed you. That had always been the goal of Confuciianism, which defined the individual's place strictly in relation to the people around her: she was somebody's daughter, somebody elses wife, and each role had specific obligations. This was an excellent way to preserve social harmony, but once social harmony was broken the lack of self-identity made it difficult ot put things back together again" (This quote has many implications for understanding a menality and social structure so different from our own in the West)

"Teacher Kong is not particularly worried. Instead, he is calm for the same reason that so many other Chinese are strangely placid in the midst of changes that seem overwhelming to outsiders. Quite simply, he has seen far worse. . . Teacher Kong had an idealistic streak- faith that the system would work itself out eventually, and he believed that it required a certain amount of forgiveness, patience, and loyalty form poeple like themselves. His faith wasn't so much specifically in Party theory as in the notion that people like them could, and should, contribute to society despite its flaws. It was in some ways a democratic line of thought, or at least a hopeful longing to find democracy buried somewhere within the corruption of the currenty system. He simply couldn't bear the thought of entirely refusing to participate" (Often we feel the need to fight for the "democratic freedom" of others failing to first understand the issue from their perspective; for many Chinese- life is vastly improved from what it was during the cultural revolution and the communist party has been there through it all- the bad and even improved times)
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May 15, 2012 Carl Nelson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed "River Town." It's not a book of momentous happenings or great conflict or history's movers and shakers, but simply a recounting of the author's time as a Peace Corps volunteer teacher in rural China.

Any travelogue success is tied in with its author's eye for detail and love for the subject matter. Hessler succeeds on both counts. His descriptions of people and places bring them to life without being lavish. He is matter-of-fact with regards to differences in the culture and the...more

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Sep 14, 2009 Matthew Kunnari rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book because at the time I was seriously thinking of teaching English in another country (Mongolia), but as you know haven't done (don't worry this book didn't hinder me from going).

I enjoyed this book because it transported me to another place that I didn't know much about. I've had a lot of friends in recent years teach in Asia and I think this book has illustrated a bit of what it's like. Hessler often notes the small subtleties of the everyday that only a mindful person would no...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Raul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An engrossing account of an American 20-something's two years teaching in China through the Peace Corps. It's not simply a journal, but a well-researched and thoughtful exploration of his experiences there. I've read a few books by Chinese authors, which gave me some insights about the peculiarities of Chinese culture, but this is the first American-in-China point-of-view that I've read.

The author makes it clear in the introduction that this is not supposed to be a book about China, only about...more

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Jan 24, 2012 S rated it 4 of 5 stars

The author, Peter Hessler, was a 26 year old English Literature graduate of Princeton and Oxford who signed up for the Peace Corps and was sent to the remote town of Fuling in the center of the Sichuan Province. Before he came to live in the town, no foreigners had lived there for over 50 years and most of the villagers had never even seen a foreigner.

Peter is there with another American, Adam and their assignment is to teach English literature to the students at the teaching college in Fuling....more

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Mar 12, 2011 Kate Pierson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, asia, best-read-2011, friendship, gritty-realism, love-the-setting, made-me-cry, memoir, china

Like so many books that I end up loving, I almost didn't read this one. I just decided, "Eh, what the heck? Since I'm reading Tiger Mother, it might be fun to read this at the same time." And I'm so glad I did! It reminds me of some of my other favorite books about Asia: Matterhorn and Sea of Poppies especially. Those two books are fiction, and this is non, but still . . . the descriptions of the river and scenery seem so green and beautiful and Asia in all three. I absolutely love books like th...more

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Dec 25, 2010 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chinese

Peter Hessler is an observant soul. Here, he shares two years of observation from his stint in China's Sichuan province as a Peace Corps volunteer. Hessler is not there to teach farming or engineering nor to provide medical assistance (which was my erroneous presumption about the Peace Corps). No, he teaches English Literature. He sounds like a wonderful teacher and the interplay with the students was the best part of the book. River Town is full of anecdotes and reads well and informs. But Hess...more

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About Peter Hessler

Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000-2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize, and Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting.

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Books by Peter Hessler

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West

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