Peter Hessler has been writing about China for some years now since his book River Town, chronicling his two year stint as a teacher in a town on the Yangtze, was published in 2001. Hessler remained in China as the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker and wrote another immensely readable and informative book about the way China was changing and growing, titled Oracle Bones. Now comes his third book about China and as always, I am impressed with the author. He writes about complex cultural and grand sweeping historical issues in a way that makes you keep turning the pages. He fills in all the details with his profiles of Chinese people he encounters (his impromptu family in rural Sancha, the factory workers in Lishui). I think he is especially skilled at conveying Chinese culture in an amusing way without being derogatory and perhaps more importantly, in a way that Americans can understand.

For instance, while observing the development in a new economic zone in Lishui, Hessler discusses the comparison between America's Industrial Revolution and the industrial revolution taking place in China right now. They are both industrial revolutions but their strengths lie in different places. America experienced an industrial revolution because of a lack of people - there was plenty of farm land readily available and people moved away, leaving industry to come up with machines like the spinning jenny and cotton gin which got the job done with minimal people power. Meanwhile in China, there are plenty of people but no innovation. Education in China is based on repetition and memorization and creativity is not exactly encouraged. A culture of innovation is not encouraged, thus it is lacking amongst industrial workers. Hessler makes parallels like this come alive for readers.