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Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

(China trilogy #3)

Peter Hessler

4.22 · Rating details · 6,568 ratings · 654 reviews

From the bestselling author of Oracle Bones and River Town comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy, on the human side of the economic revolution in China. In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile ...more

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Hardcover, 448 pages

Published February 9th 2010 by Harper (first published 2009)

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Jun 22, 2017 Adina rated it liked it

Shelves: travel, non-fiction, china

It took me a while to finish this one as I could not read more than a few pages at the time. The information was interesting but many times too much detail was given. There were also some funny bits that I enjoyed.

One thing is for sure. I will forever bee afraid of Chinese tax-drivers from now on. Not that I did not find them incompetent already.

A more in detail review might come...or not.

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Jan 21, 2017 Mikey B. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: china, journalism, travelogue, 21st-century-history

This is superlative! The author is engaging and gives us wonderful and sometimes heart-rending insights of the people in China; and at other times he is hilarious in describing the odd situations that pop-up now and again in a country that is vastly different from Western society. But this country, at the same time, is producing a wide variety of the goods used by Western society.

Page 294 (my book)

There was nothing more terrifying than a drive through the citys coastal suburbs. Fifteen years This is superlative! The author is engaging and gives us wonderful and sometimes heart-rending insights of the people in China; and at other times he is hilarious in describing the odd situations that pop-up now and again in a country that is vastly different from Western society. But this country, at the same time, is producing a wide variety of the goods used by Western society.

Page 294 (my book)

There was nothing more terrifying than a drive through the city’s coastal suburbs. Fifteen years ago, this region was all farmland... Now you judged transitions by advertisements on the side of the road... First I cruised through a neighborhood where virtually every billboard displayed hinges, and then I began to see signs for electric plugs and adaptors. Soon they were replaced by plastic light switches; next came fluorescent bulbs... At last I came to the district of Ru’an, which according to the local government was home to exactly 1,208 manufacturers of automobile engine accessories, brakes and steering systems.

The author is fluent in Mandarin (spoken and written) so he is able blend in and take in the activities around him, like family squabbles, business deals... China is a country undergoing massive transitions. Rural people have moved in the millions to urban areas to work in factories and do construction. The landscape is being physically flattened for the making of these factories and the vast network of roads surrounding them. Many of the people moving have little education (many are illiterate) – their life is in upheaval, but possibilities are endless.

Businessmen (mostly men) network with others. Part of this social process involves the handing out of cigarettes. There are hundreds of brands of cigarettes which signify the class of the person; for example there are cigarette brands smoked by people in rural areas – and more expensive types smoked in urban areas. By handing out a particular brand signifies who you are, or aspire to be, in this changing world.

Young girls are leaving home to move and work in the cities and manufacturing sites. They are becoming more independent. The author provides a stunning account of a fifteen year old girl who gets jobs at a factory for her entire family (she masqueraded as an 18 year old to do this).

The book is in three sections. The first is a road trip along the Great Wall. The second takes place in a small rural village that undergoes, within a few years, the transition to a more urban lifestyle due to the entrepreneurship of the villagers. Lastly the author spends time with workers and managers in the start-up of a factory that is making bra hooks and bra wires – by the thousands in whatever colour desired for the hooks, and all sizes for the wires!

This is a great book about a country on the move.

Page 362

“Going to a new job is like gambling.” Master Luo explained. “You leave and you hope that the new factory does well. If it doesn’t, then you probably can’t go back to the old job and the old life. What’s in the past stays in the past.”
...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Ensiform rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, travel, china

The author, a journalist and old China hand, describes life on the road in a rural China that is rapidly developing, with new roads and factories being built every year. At 420 pages, the books scope is much wider than the simple comedy of renting a car in a heavily bureaucratic society that nevertheless has a vibrant under-the-table economy, or the perils of driving in a country where most people behind the wheel have had very little training and eschew wipers and lights. Hessler rents a house ...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Gabriel rated it liked it · review of another edition

County Driving is really three books in one. The first, about Hessler's road trip along the Great Wall and about driving in China generally is entertaining, but ultimately the least interesting of the three. Although the episodes of his road trip are interesting, it fails to add up to anything more than shaggy-dog story.

In the second part about life in a small village outside Beijing that undergoes huge transformation in just a few years as it is discovered by road-tripping Beijingers, Hessler ...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Amy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: shanghaimamas-book-club

We read this for the August Book club - but we didn't get a chance to discuss it because of schedule conflicts. I liked the book overall. It had a bit more detail than the ususual expat book because it was outside of Shanghai and Beijing. The one thing I kept thinking of while I was reading it was whether it was already all out dated. The book was published in 2010, but much of it was based on his research and trips from the early 2000's. So much changes so fast in China - everything is another We read this for the August Book club - but we didn't get a chance to discuss it because of schedule conflicts. I liked the book overall. It had a bit more detail than the ususual expat book because it was outside of Shanghai and Beijing. The one thing I kept thinking of while I was reading it was whether it was already all out dated. The book was published in 2010, but much of it was based on his research and trips from the early 2000's. So much changes so fast in China - everything is another whole generation past what he experienced. Here are some of the items I found most interesting or thought provoking, or were new insights considering I've already read about 5 expat memoirs/thinly veiled novels.

1. I never knew the use of headlights was banned in Beijing until the 1970s. That explains alot to me.
2. The old man who asked him if he was Chinese - "I thought you weren't Chinese!" That made me laugh.
3. I really wish some of the sections on the great wall had pictures. He is fine at describing things, but it is hard for me to really imagine things from his descriptons.
4. In the part where he talked about the differences between the three country brothers and the Beijing kids - he said, "I never saw kids like this in Beijing --in the capital, nearly everybody is an only child, coddled and spoiled from birth" It really evoked the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins for me - and it really is like that in China, how much the people in the cities have, vs. the subsistence life styles in the country.
5. I didn't know the bus drivers were paid on a percentage of ticket sales, that explains why the bus was so overstuffed in a long haul bus accident I heard about a few months ago.
6. Unbelievably -- it is the second time I have heard a story of the office paper from the US/UK sent to China for recycling - it was also in a book about Chinese quality.
7. I really liked the stories in the Village where he slowly befriended the towns people, I think that was the most engaging section of the book. It was interesting to see the families changing with the influx of money and the opportunities.
8. Also to see how they tried to navigate the politics - shows me why I am so bad at it here.
9. I think the stories of the people who work in the pleather factories are tragic.

Overall I really liked the book.
...more

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Apr 25, 2010 Katherine rated it it was amazing

This book was my top read of the summer. I found myself laughing outloud, and searching for opportunties to read tid-bits to whoever was around to listen. Hessler has an engaging writing style, and an ability to effortlessly jump from an emotional, moving description that almost brings you to tears to a hilarious depiction so absurd you can't imagine it to be true. When he said he got on the new highway in China and couldn't get off for two hours because the on and off ramps hadn't been built, I ...more

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Dec 29, 2010 Emily rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2010

I picked up this book because I vividly remembered the author's 2007 New Yorker article about driving in China and about the Chinese becoming a society of drivers. This contains the same material but a lot more; it's roughly divided into three sections. The first is about exploring the Great Wall by car; the second is about a village north of Beijing, Sancha, where the author has a second home; the third is about a factory outside Wenzhou that makes bra rings (you know, the little rings on the ...more

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Aug 11, 2010 AC rated it it was amazing

Shelves: china, audible

I haven't finished (listening), but I *can* write a comment now. This is a wonderful book. Hessler is a wonderful and brilliant writer. He has a deep and serious understanding of culture (as such), as well as of Chinese culture in particular; he is intelligent, observant, has emotional range, a sense of humor -- and, most importantly, he is writing about something important. The emergence of China is a world-historical event, and this book -- much of which takes place in rural China in 2002-2006 ...more

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Mar 23, 2013 John rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, library_books, ebooks

I finally finished this book, from sheer willpower more than anything else! Others may find his stuff fascinating, but for me as a reader he fails to "connect" - with stories that should seem personal coming off as detached. Moreover, the narrative is often bogged down with details (such as those concerning Chinese bra parts manufacturing). The first third of the book, traveling by car through China in days when passenger cars were rare, held my interest the most.

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Nov 21, 2018 The Nerdwriter rated it really liked it

Not sure why, but I got the urge to learn more about modern China. After researching a bunch of books about The Party, about Xi Jinping and geopolitics, I came across some glowing reviews for Peter Hessler's Country Driving, which presents China in the opposite way: from the bottom-up. Despite the boring title, this book was a great introduction to the Chinese people's perspective on their country, through the eyes of a subtle observer and writer.

The book is broken up into three parts: in the Not sure why, but I got the urge to learn more about modern China. After researching a bunch of books about The Party, about Xi Jinping and geopolitics, I came across some glowing reviews for Peter Hessler's Country Driving, which presents China in the opposite way: from the bottom-up. Despite the boring title, this book was a great introduction to the Chinese people's perspective on their country, through the eyes of a subtle observer and writer.

The book is broken up into three parts: in the first, Hessler drives the length of The Great Wall, documenting the surrounding countryside; in the second, he rents a home in a small town called Sancha and lives for some years among the rural residents; and in the third, he documents the growth of a boom-town and the launch of a factory that manufactures bra rings. In all the book took the better part of a decade to write, and that patience offers depth, a depth you're not going to find in articles or headlines about China's latest this or that.

But what makes Country Driving really special is the people Hessler presents to the reader. As a foreigner in parts of China not used to seeing many, he has a talent for blending in, stepping aside and making local citizens feel comfortable enough to share their stories. In the course of hearing about these rich, changing lives, you learn so much about what it's really like to live and work in China. Every challenge, every milestone, every part of a daily routine speaks to a larger trend or philosophy, and Hessler is great at working in these contexts. By the end you have learned a lot about geopolitics and economics, not in an abstract way, but through the experience of people who are actually living the rapid changes in Chinese society.

And those changes (the book takes place from 2001 to 2007) are profound. You can see the effects a decade later: China is an economic powerhouse that grew (and is growing) much faster than many expected it could, while The Party still retains an authoritarian grip on power. Though political dissent is essentially impossible, the Chinese people -- even those from rural regions -- are not powerless. The chance for upward mobility in the new economy is everywhere for those who work hard and can manipulate their situation. Hessler has a deep admiration for these people, but he's not wearing rose-colored glasses. He can't help but see the Chinese culture through American eyes, no matter how much he learns. He often experiences things that shock him, and they shocked me too, but he's doesn't judge and that encouraged me to do the same. The result is a feeling of sympathy for complex people facing a new world rushing toward them.

I'm sure I'll get to the top-down, zoomed-out books about China eventually, but I'm glad I started with this instead. It's not as boring as the title, just the opposite. Promise. ...more

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May 05, 2019 Robert rated it it was amazing

Peter Hessler is a master of explaining national trends through the lens of everyday, normal people. What struck me most about the book was the depth of friendship Hessler built with members of the communities he visited, a testament to his grasp of Chinese and willingness to enter into their lives. I got the sense they became genuine friends, and were not just characters to be researched for a book. Would love to sit down with him and hear more stories from his life in China.

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Oct 04, 2010 Sue rated it it was amazing

Country Driving is Peter Hesslers third book about China, and it might be the best one to convey the sense of rapid change in the country he knows so well. The book is in three parts, each covering personal experiences that Hessler had over the course of several years.

In a series of road trips following the Great Wall across northern China, he visits villages barely hanging on as their residents depart for cities. Hessler has an eye for the contradictions and ironies that abound. I love the ...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Margaret rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, 5-star-books

Author / journalist Peter Hessler is one of my Top Favorite authors: He writes very well, he notices and finds "the interesting" in just about everything (and then makes you interested in these things as well), he is clearly fascinated by China and human nature, and observes and writes about both enormously well, and, on top of it, he's just an all around decent guy with whom it's fun to spend a lot of reading time. "Country Driving" is his third book about China, written while living there, and ...more

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Jan 20, 2019 Leslie rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Fascinating, but long, account of the author's life in China for about 10 years, where he worked as a reporter for The New Yorker. In three parts, it includes a drive across China at the Great Wall, life in a small village, and investigation of the expanding industrial zone in the south. The theme of the entire book is the ever-changing nature of this country, where there is a massive migration from the rural areas into urban areas to work in what is China's exploding industrial revolution.

I ...more

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Oct 11, 2018 Alex Kudera rated it it was amazing

For Peter Hessler, if you aren't familiar with his writing from China, I suggest beginning with a couple pieces you can find online at The New Yorker: "The Middleman" or "Walking the Wall." If you're ready for an entire book, I'd try River Town first.

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Jun 25, 2018 Aoi rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, hf-china

I took a fair while to get through this - partly due to having read the China trilogy all in one go. And as with all things, there comes a stage when oft repeated observations come off as tedious.

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Feb 18, 2013 Paige rated it liked it

3 1/2 stars. Hessler's writing is engaging and informative; he has interesting stories and made me laugh more than a few times. I definitely learned a lot about China and it was enjoyable to read. Then why only 3 1/2 stars? It's really hard to put my finger on (and also I think I've been getting pickier in my ratings over the last few months). One thing that got on my nerves was how he'd dedicate a sentence or two to describe a woman as being "pretty"--leaving aside my total disintrest in this ...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Joel rated it really liked it

To learn more about the Asia-Pacific, I loaded my tablet with a weighty number of e-books about the region. Country Driving seemed like a friendly place to start, and it was exactly that. The text is prone to tangents, but that's how the author seems to experience the world, so this was actually part of the charm. Peter Hessler provides an interesting inside view of China that is less evident from the outside looking in. A mass migration from rural to urban life as people seek new opportunities ...more

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Mar 02, 2010 Mickey Hoffman rated it it was amazing

I thought this book was hilarious but then, I've been to China several times and speak the language. What one instantly realizes as a visitor is that you cross the streets at your own peril, never mind the driving part. Riding in a taxi can be enough of a thrill if you like being scared out of your mind. We had a ride on a winding mountainous dirt road in Yunnan province that I never thought I'd live to see the end of. The city driving isn't any better.
But the book's not all about drivers and ...more

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Jul 21, 2010 Anne Van rated it it was amazing

I'd give this book six stars! I've been a fan of Peter Hessler for some years now.....loved his first book, Rivertown, about being a Peace Corps english teacher in China in the mid-1990's, and many wonderful New Yorker pieces on China. This is the latest, China in dizzingly rapid transition in the last ten years, as told through three stories: a long drive along the Great Wall in Northern China, observations about life in Sancha, a small village where he rents a second house, and travels to a ...more

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Jan 05, 2015 Adam Crossley rated it it was amazing

China is a land of mind bending and almost unfathomable contrasts.

In Country Driving, Peter Hessler captures this in eloquent prose that is a joy to read. He covers rural China as he drives along the Great Wall and eventually lives in its shadow. Perhaps the best part of the book is when he moves to into a developing factory zone. His words embody the grit, money and chaos with a humanistic touch that brings it down to the commoners experience.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn ...more

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Feb 27, 2010 Idiosyncratic marked it as to-read

I love this from the review in The New York Times:

Its hard to imagine another place where people take such joy in driving so badly, Hessler writes. Beijingers drive the way they used to walk in packs and without signaling. They dont mind if you tailgate, or pass on the right or drive on the sidewalk. You can back down a highway entrance ramp without anybody batting an eyelash. . . . People pass on hills; they pass on turns; they pass in tunnels. I ...more

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Jun 09, 2019 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Drifted off in the last third but I very much enjoyed the first part.

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Jul 01, 2015 Maggie rated it really liked it

Excellent. The first section reads like a chapter out of my own life, made better by the fact that I read it while I was enjoying rural Chinese transport.

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Jan 07, 2017 Kevin rated it liked it · review of another edition

I give it 3.5 stars. I enjoyed Peter Hesslers Country Driving, but not quite as much as Oracle Bones. Country Driving is a book in three parts: driving along the Great Wall, spending time in the village of Sancha outside of Beijing, and taking in factory life in Lishui. I most enjoyed the first section, which reminded me the most of Oracle Bones, where he would use something he experienced as an excuse to give more background information on a topic. The other two sections had more narrative and I give it 3.5 stars. I enjoyed Peter Hessler’s Country Driving, but not quite as much as Oracle Bones. Country Driving is a book in three parts: driving along the Great Wall, spending time in the village of Sancha outside of Beijing, and taking in factory life in Lishui. I most enjoyed the first section, which reminded me the most of Oracle Bones, where he would use something he experienced as an excuse to give more background information on a topic. The other two sections had more narrative and less context. They were still good, but lacked the interconnectedness of the other stories.

I enjoyed the first section of the book that talked about the Great Wall and driving in China. He described the purpose of the wall, and how it wasn’t just one wall built at a moment in time, but a series of walls built as the need arose. He rented a Jeep “City Special” in Beijing and drove along the great wall. In some places, cars were commonplace, but as he got to more rural areas, cars were less common. “In 2001, the year I got my license, the country had a population of over 1.2 billion, but there were fewer than ten million passenger vehicles. The ratio was 128 people for every vehicle, similar to the United States in 1911.” (16) I liked the mention of people putting crops in the road so they could be run over for shucking. Given that the number of cars and roads was exploding, there were not many experienced drivers, so driving around sounded pretty exciting. He went and observed a driver’s education class and got the impression that there was an overemphasis on completing certain very specific tasks than having a good feel for the typical things you encounter while driving. For example, pulling a car forward within inches of a specified point was thoroughly tested, but driving in traffic was not done very much. He used the drive as an opportunity to talk about history and the differences between the Chinese and Mongols ways of life. “He [American historian Arthur Waldron] told me that it’s critical to understand the Chinese perspective. ‘To them, it wasn’t Chinese civilization…it was civilization. It would naturally appeal to anybody, regardless of their ethnicity, in the same way that dentistry with Novocain would appeal to anybody. And by and large that was the case. As the empire expanded to the south, it wasn’t that Chinese people moved in, but that locals changed their customs. They cooked up phony family trees, they built shrines – they did the same thing that anybody does when they’re trying to enter a new culture. To this day, this is the strength of the Chinese. It’s not force. It’s not that they’ve got spies or secret police. It’s that there is something about being a part of this Chinese world that is appealing to the people around it.’” (35) I thought the barbell age distributions of some of the small towns was interesting as well, and wonder to what degree it remains that way. The young adults would go and move to the cities to work in a factory and send money back, leaving the very young and the elderly in the towns. They wouldn’t necessarily go to the biggest cities, but one of the big cities in their province. People periodically complained about a lack of opportunity in some of the rural places. “The phrase he used – Shan gao hunagdi yuan, The mountains are high, the emperor far away – is common in rural China. People invariable believe that problems are local, and that higher-ranked leaders are honest and decent; it’s rare to meet somebody who is cynical about eh system to its core. And it’s hard for them to grasp the inevitability of bad geography. For a village like Dingjia, the mountains are high and the factories far away – there was no way they could compete with the coastal economy, and even the best-run tree-planting campaign would have a limited impact on a place like this. The man told me that when he was a child, Dingjia had a population of two hundred; now there were only eighty people left. I’d heard the same thing at all the stops along my drive – every village had a declining population.” (42) It’s a little sad, but it’s understandable that people want to rise out of poverty.

Hessler wanted a place that he could go to to escape the noise and bustle of Beijing, and found a house to rent in 2002 with an American friend and photographer, Mimi Kuo-Deemer, in the town of Sancha. It was a couple of hours outside of Beijing, and inhabited by a few hundred people. It was close to the Great Wall, but didn’t really have many places for tourists to visit. It took some negotiating with the local authorities, but they were finally allowed to rent the house. Here, Hessler got to know Wei Ziqi, he wife Cao Chunmei and their son Wei Jia. “In the countryside, traditional parents avoid flattery, and the mother’s responses [to Hessler’s praise] were automatic – it was like knocking her knee with a rubber hammer. She didn’t want to spoil the child, but there was also the Chinese superstition that pride attracts misfortune. The only praise I ever heard the parents give Wei Jia was a single adjective: laoshi. The dictionary defines it as ‘honest,’ but the term is difficult to translate. It also means obedient, as well as having a certain sense of propriety that is characteristic of people in the countryside.” (144) Wei Jia eventually needed to go to school, so he needed to travel to another town for that. There were not any schools nearby, so he had to be boarded at the school. After noticing a lot of bruising, the parents took him to the hospital for tests. “In China I was accustomed to people being more patient with me; in general they’re inclined to grant a sort of exaggerated respect to any foreigner who speaks the language. Usually this deference makes life easier, and like any long-term foreign resident I learned to play it to my advantage. But I had no illusions about what it really meant. At the root of that respect is insecurity: deep down, many Chinese, especially educated people, are slightly ashamed of the way their country might appear to an outsider. Dr. Zhao didn’t see me as a person who cared for a sick child; in her eyes I was simply a foreigner who distrusted her competence. And she was clearly annoyed by Wei Ziqi’s faith in my judgment. Together we brought out the city woman’s worst instincts, from both sides of the spectrum: she responded to the peasant with arrogance and the foreigner with insecurity.” (169) Wei Jia eventually got the blood transfusion to address his low white blood cell count, and recovered. Local politics also came into play as Wei Ziqi became a member of the Communist party, was in the running for a position in the local government, and became more successful as a businessman. The family was able to offer lodging and food for tourists, making much more money than they previously had, and rising in status. While finances were not as much of a worry, stress from business, increased alcohol use, and unhealthy eating caused the overall well-being to be more complicated to evaluate. I thought it was interesting reading about how Wei Ziqi would wear one outfit for when he was in Sancha, but then put on his “city clothes” if he needed to meet with people somewhere else. He admired the character and priorities of many of the rural people over those in the cities he sometimes encountered. “Young urban women are called xiaojie, or ‘miss,’ and nowadays most xiaojie cultivate a distinct physical helplessness. They are great arm-flailers and foot-stampers; they wear impractical clothes and they stagger around on stiletto heels. Everything is designed to attract attention, and in the entire animal kingdom there’s no more striking vision than a xiaojie running to catch a cab. It’s like the mating dance of a peacock: plumage everywhere, a stunning profligacy of flash and color, so much movement combined with so little obvious purpose.” (190) Under the stress of increased work and lack of increased status for herself, Cao Chunmei began to embrace Buddhism. “Even when it comes to religion, the Chinese can be pragmatic – they might possess the desire to believe, but few will cling to a doomed faith once the government applies serious pressure. And the religious impulse often has more to do with a search for community than anything else. In china, rapid change has left many people with a hollow feeling: they no longer believe in the Communist ideology of old, and the forces of migration and urbanization have radically transformed society. The new pursuit of wealth can seem empty and exhausting: many people wish for a more meaningful connection with others. Some of them turn to religion not necessarily because they desire a personal relationship with God, but because they want to share something with neighbors and friends.” (204) The town, like most of China, experienced rapid change as roads were improved, cars were more common, and tourism started to grow. This resulted in many visible, tangible, measurable improvements, but also had some drawbacks that were less initially apparent. “The longer I lived in China, the more I worried about how people responded to rapid change. This wasn’t an issue of modernization, at least not in the absolute sense; I never opposed progress. I understood why people were eager to escape poverty, and I had a deep respect for their willingness to work and adapt. But there were costs when this process happened so fast. Often the problems were subtle – this was hard to recognize as an outsider. In the West, newspaper stories about China tended to focus on the dramatic and the political, and they emphasized the risk of instability, especially the localized protests that often occurred in the countryside. But from what I saw, the nation’s greatest turmoil was more personal and internal. Many people were searching; they longed for some kind of religious or philosophical truth, and they wanted a meaningful connection with others. They had trouble applying past experiences to current challenges. Parents and children occupied different worlds, and marriages were complicated – rarely did I know a Chinese couple who seemed happy together. It was all but impossible for people to keep their bearings in a country that changed so fast.” (264) I liked how this section looked at the complex relationships between the people in power in the town, and how certain aspects of the simplicity of rural life were valuable, even though it wasn’t always easy for the locals to see it.

In 2005, Hessler went to the city of Lishui, which was just starting to be developed and factories were starting to pop up. “This par tof Zhejiang is famous for difficult dialects, and it’s also full of one-product towns. Locals tend to specialize in some simple object, in part because they have little formal training and it’s easiest to manufacture something that doesn’t require much technology and investment. Whenever Highway 330 led me to a place of decent size, I pulled over and asked a bystander, ‘What do people make here?’ Usually they could answer the question in a sentence; sometimes they didn’t need to say a word. In the town of Wuyi, a man responded by reaching into his pocket and pulling out a handful of playing cards. I subsequently learned that Wuyi manufactures one billion decks a year: half of China’s domestic market. Fifty miles away, Yiwu makes one quarter of the world’s plastic drinking straws. A place called Yongkang produces 95 percent of Chinese scales. In another part of Zhejiang, Songxia turns out 350 million umbrellas every year. Fenshui specializes in pens; Shangguan manufactures table tennis paddles.” (285) Hessler made friends with an uncle and nephew who go into business manufacturing bra rings. Boss Gao and Boss Wang drew out specifications for the factory in about an hour and then workers got to building the office. To help set up the manufacturing, they hired Master Luo, who had worked at a number of other bra ring factories, and knew the setup by heart. After a little trial and error, they got the machines working, and were in business. Master Luo had done this a few times before, and was valuable to companies setting up shop and kept getting bought out by competitors. There was a lot of competition, and many factories were setting up shop. “’It was a lot easier to do business in the 1990s…there weren’t so many people starting factories back then.”’ He often spoke fondly about that time; for Boss Gao, who was all of thirty-three years old, the 1990s were the good old days, when competition wasn’t so intense. ‘Back then it was the product that mattered…It used to be that you’d try to find a product that nobody else was making. But now everything is already being made by somebody in China. No matter what you make, you’re going to have competition. So now it’s not the product that counts. It’s the volume.” (297) I thought the hiring process was interesting. “Ten years ago, most Chinese employment was government-assigned, and in those days it was rare for a Chinese person to embark on an independent job search. Since then, people have learned quickly, but the routine is still new – the blind recruit the blind. And they have no time for the polish of the American human resources department. There are no euphemisms, no indirections; nobody talks about ‘becoming part of the team” or ‘opportunities for growth’ or a desire for ‘highly motivated, creative individuals.’ People say exactly what they think, and they make brutally sharp evaluations; they feel free to act on any whim or prejudice. Here in china, ‘human resources’ has a more literal meaning: millions of people need to find work, and countless factories need them to work hard, and no subtleties of language can soften the hard calculus of supply and demand.” (319) People would lie about their age so they could get a job, they were so eager to work. They also cared more about opportunity to earn money, not just the wage. “The factory offered a starting wage of three and a half yuan per hour, which was a little more than forty cents. In Lishui, that was the legal minimum. China doesn’t have a nationwide standard – because of wide regional disparities in wealth, each city sets its own minimum wage. In 2006, a more developed place like Guangzhou had a minimum of 4.3 yuan per hour, but that didn’t guarantee that workers earned more money. In advanced cities, low-level jobs might be harder to find, or hours might be fewer. This is a key detail for workers, who care about hours as much as they care about the starting wage. Most people want to work as much as possible – since they’re away from home, there’s no point is having free weekends or holidays. They’re pleased to hear that a factory offers overtime hours, and the perfect job is one in which an employee can expect no vacation days about from major national holidays, such as the Spring Festival. Sometimes an assembly-line worker told me proudly that she was clocking nearly three hundred hours per month. In that situation, Lishui’s hourly minimum became a monthly wage of one hundred and twenty dollars – excellent money for an uneducated migrant.” (320) It is weird to think of people being overjoyed to have the opportunity to go work somewhere with potentially toxic fumes and low safety standards with long hours and monotonous work. That was the best option available, though, so they did whatever they could to get one of those jobs. “Initiative mattered most, regardless of how bosses imagined ideal employees. Often they made them sound like automatons – over and over, Boss Wang and others told me that they wanted applicants to be young, inexperienced, and uneducated. They didn’t want distinctive hairstyles; they didn’t want people with hobbies; they didn’t need opinions on the work floor. But the truth was that even the most pragmatic boss was susceptible to a strong personality.” (321) I enjoyed the color that the Tao family. The youngest daughter got a job using her sister’s id (she was underage), then the older teenage sister, then the father got jobs. After the long work day, the parents sold magazines and other small items as well. They were always working! It was amazing to see how hungry they were to work hard so they could move their way up in the world. This section was more narrative than background, which I thought left it lacking. I did enjoy the discussion of land use. “In the Chinese countryside, all land is collective, and farmers like Wei Ziqi have no right to sell their plots or homes on the open market. Instead the village handles all deals, and even the village has little power to negotiate if a city decides to expand into their farmland. In these situations, the city can acquire the land at will, and they pay set prices that have been established by the government. After the sale is made, and the farmers have moved off the land, the city can build basic infrastructure and reclassify the region as urban. And urban land-use rights can be auctioned off at market rates, to the highest bidder. It’s a type of arbitrage, buying rural land and reselling it as urban, and it can be practiced only by governments from the township level up. The profits from such exchanges are immense. Wang Lina, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told me that cities in coastal regions receive roughly half their fiscal revenue from real estate transactions…Local government often build a development zone, where they sell land-use rights at cost. The cheap prices attract factories, which provide some tax revenue, but the key is that they expand the city. More bosses, more shopkeepers, more migrants – all of it means more suburbs and a better real estate market. If a city hopes to stay solvent, it must continually expand.” (344) Overall, I thought it was a missed opportunity to provide more context.

Overall, I liked this book, and how it gave a peek into what China was like at a certain time and place. I like how Hessler, in his books, shows the types of things that people were thinking about, and what priorities they had. Because this takes place in distinct places in different time periods, this book is a little less cohesive than the last one. I still like the concept, and like the topics, but I just don’t think it’s as cohesive and good of a book as Oracle Bones. I recommend this book because I think the perspectives of the ordinary people he encounters and talks with are fantastic, but I just wish that it was a little bit more of a common thread in the book. ...more

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Apr 24, 2018 Simon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Its refreshing to read a travelogue from someone so deeply immersed in the place theyre describing. Hessler isnt just passing through; hes lived in China for years, speaks Chinese, has done his research, and has integrated himself into the local community. There are three distinct sections: driving along the Great Wall, spending a few years living in a mountain village, and exploring the souths development zones where factory strips and whole towns spring up almost overnight. Hessler gets very ...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Stephen Joyce rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: asian-books

Country Driving, A Chinese Road Trip is a travelogue by Peter Hessler, a US journalist and writer who was based in Beijing from 2000 to 2007 as a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

The book is split into three distinct sections. The Wall covers the authors technically illegal 7000 mile trip from Inner Mongolia to Tibet, tracking the Great Wall (or, more accurately, Walls) of China through the less densely populated areas of the country. Hessler, fluent in Chinese, embarks upon his journey ‘Country Driving, A Chinese Road Trip’ is a travelogue by Peter Hessler, a US journalist and writer who was based in Beijing from 2000 to 2007 as a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

The book is split into three distinct sections. ‘The Wall’ covers the author’s technically illegal 7000 mile trip from Inner Mongolia to Tibet, tracking the Great Wall (or, more accurately, Walls) of China through the less densely populated areas of the country. Hessler, fluent in Chinese, embarks upon his journey in a 4x4 vehicle stuffed with camping equipement, Coca Cola, Gatorade and Oreo cookies. He encounters local curiosity, official suspicion and heaps of absurdity along the way. Dotted along the side of the highways are smiling, waving traffic police – well, lifesize replicas made of fibreglass. He is stopped by real police who think he is an American spy, then wave him on his way, laughing. In the country that virtually invented cartography, its maps are largely inaccurate, while the driving technique of the average Chinese is borderline suicidal.

In part 2, ‘The Village’, Hessler rents a second house (not much more than a shack) in a small village called Sancha, two hours drive north of Beijing. There to sample rural Chinese life and concentrate on writing, he becomes closely embroiled in the increasingly complex life of a local family with whom it is impossible not to form an emotional connection. In one episode, Hessler tries to save the life of the son, Wei Jia who becomes seriously ill. He becomes more than a passive observer, actively participating in village life, playing his part in the huge changes that occur when the father, Wei Ziqi becomes a successful businessman and Communist Party cadre.

The texture of village life is documented with compassion, insight and humour. But by the time he leaves, old village life has almost dissolved. Hessler clearly has deep affection for contemporary Chinese people. He brilliantly portrays their industry, their determination, their insecurity, their mutual support networks, their direct approach to conversation, their pragmatism and their drive for self-improvement.

Most enlightening and exhausting to read is the final section, ‘The Factory’.
This may give a different dimension to your next visit to Primark or some other shop where a T-shirt costs £1.

Hessler chronicles what he saw of the fastest and greatest population shift in history - the migration of tens of millions of Chinese village dwellers to work in large towns and cities. He witnesses how whole towns become dedicated to the production of a single product. One factory manufactures an incredible one-third of all socks sold in the world. Hessler’s s factory is based in Lishui, in southern Zhejiang province, and is manned by migrant workers, who are often treated with disdain by their employers. Its only products are the tiny metal rings that are used to hold women’s bra straps together. Like many others, a company formed with no proper business plan, imported machinery past its use-by date runs this factory with workers whose only concern is money. If demand for a product drops there is no quick way to recalibrate the machinery and make something else, so production immediately slows or stops completely, leaving abandoned factories and discontented workers. Perhaps a Marxist would claim that given the economic and social conditions, China is ripe for a proletarian revolution. How ironic that this is the greatest fear of the ruling Communist Party.

Whilst not laid bare, we are given an insight into the mysterious complexities of the Guanxi system that has operated in China for a long time. This is a system of giving and receiving gifts for business related favours. In some ways it is highly functional and smoothens the path of business development. There is a series of unwritten rules (it is important no paper trail is found) around who gets what and when. Even cigarettes have a hierarchy depending on social/business class. To the Western eye, guanxi appears to be the systemisation of bribery and corruption.

The central government seems unconcerned about corrupt practices and is, in fact, usually ignored in factory towns, unless its lackeys need backhanders to facilitate some business project. Instead, vast swathes of government money are spent on infrastructure projects: roads, railways and airports, while capitalists (often relations and friends of top Communist Party bosses) are given licence to let loose on the population. It should be said of course that the population are willing and able participants. Through the process of industrialisation hundreds of millions have been taken out of rural poverty in the last decade or more.

Newspapers and literary magazines all over the world have raved about this book. It was longlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize (2010). The cover quotes focus on Hessler’s wry humour and the hilarity of some of the scrapes into which he gets himself. Perhaps understandably, not one mentions that some parts are profoundly sad and depressing, in particular the treatment of workers (the literal meaning of human resources is all too evident) and the confusion and unhappiness caused by rapid change. Change continues to happen so fast that a sense of collective dislocation and anxiety are prevalent. There has been little time for China to gain a new soul.

Country Driving is not a book about the relatively rich, cosmopolitan China of Shangahi and Beijing. It is about the heartland of a country that is going through a rapid industrial revolution with seemingly little idea of where it will end up.

The human cost of communism in China has been reasonably well documented, despite all attempts to suppress the truth. What will History have to say about China’s dramatic shift to a mixture of kleptocratic, state and cowboy capitalism?
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Mar 04, 2019 Sourabh Rohilla rated it it was amazing

China. The place where we get our kitchen crockery and diwali-diyas, also increasingly big funding rounds for home-grown startups. It's right next to our border, and reading this book made me feel like it's an entirely different world. The book is set in 2002-2007 and given the pace of change in China, that is ages ago. But, you can get a very good sense of China, its farms and its factories, its people and their aspirations, role of state and industry. There are few people who are keen ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Julia Rosa rated it really liked it

I read this book while on my own journey through China, so it was interesting to read it while mixing it with my own perceptions of the places and people (and how almost 10-20 years made such a huuuge difference in the country). The book mixes 3 journeys during 3 different periods: road trip following the Great Wall (getting in contact with the old), life in a village next to Beijing (seeing the boom of development and how this change affected the rural populations - the backbone of the ...more

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Jan 13, 2019 James Jacobsen rated it it was amazing

If you read but one book about ascending China let this be it. The in-country journalist writes about three topics, the Wall and northwest China, The Wall and trying to get a dig in a village to do his writing, and finally the Industrialization of the Southeast part of the country. In the course of reading you will be awed by the placement of plastic policeman statues along roads to encourage better driving behavior, you will learn why Chinese refuse to refill the tank to the brim they return a ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Beijing CS Book Club: Country Driving, by Peter Hessler	4	22	Jan 27, 2012 08:02AM
GPS coordinates for those places?	1	22	May 21, 2010 09:23PM
Photographs?	2	22	May 21, 2010 09:17PM

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About Peter Hessler

Peter Hessler

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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.