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Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Peter Hessler

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Jan 18, 2014 Mary rated it liked it

Country Driving" consists of three narratives intended to convey how China is changing with the building of new roads. While the book accomplishes little in that regard, it does help readers understand Chinese culture, how that culture is developed at school, and the idiosyncrasies of life in China. The book begins with Hessler acquiring a Chinese driver's license in 2001 after living and touring in China for five years teaching English, serving as a free-lance reporter, and learning to read and Country Driving" consists of three narratives intended to convey how China is changing with the building of new roads. While the book accomplishes little in that regard, it does help readers understand Chinese culture, how that culture is developed at school, and the idiosyncrasies of life in China. The book begins with Hessler acquiring a Chinese driver's license in 2001 after living and touring in China for five years teaching English, serving as a free-lance reporter, and learning to read and speak Chinese.

Obtaining a driver's license is no mean feat for Chinese citizens - requirements include a medical checkup, passing a written exam, and completing a driving course and extensive driving test. (These requirements are greatly lessened for those already licensed in other nations.) Unfortunately, the driving courses and regulations have little connection to safety - seat belts, turn signals, and children's car seats are not required, and despite having only one-fifth the number of vehicles for about the same geographic area as the U.S., China has twice the number of traffic fatalities. A lesser problem is that maps do not label most roads, lack a marked scale or distances between towns, and the indicated roads sometimes turn into creek beds. Nonetheless, almost 1,000 new drivers register each day in Beijing alone. Hessler always rented the vehicles he used, probably because autos owned by foreigners have a distinctive license plate that would reveal when he was traveling outside his residence area - guaranteeing special police attention.

Hessler's first narrative summarized his driving over 7,000 miles across northern China following the Great Wall, built during the Ming Dynasty - 1368-1644, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau in a rented Chinese-made Jeep Cherokee ($30/day). (Hessler was required to immediately leave the Tibetan area - it is forbidden to foreigners.) Many days he traveled less than 100 miles, taking time to tour and visit with locals, and usually camping out to avoid small-town hotels because they often reported him to local police. (Foreign journalists were required to apply to local authorities before arriving - Hessler rarely did so because he lacked a set itinerary and the process invariably led to more questioning.) Truckers' dorms were an alternative because they normally lacked the police registration forms. Besides rarely seen portions of the Great Wall, Hessler also observed numerous remains of signal towers also built during the Ming dynasty - the remains were over 20' high, made of tamped earth, and had been used to send military communications using fires, lanterns, smoke signals, and flags. Some of the Great Wall has been denuded of its brick facing - used as a 'free' resource and also a target of Cultural Revolution efforts to obliterate China's feudal past; this is no longer allowed. The less-traveled roads often were covered with grain piles during harvest time - an illegal practice that provided free threshing by passing vehicle tires. Occasionally Hessler's travel was interrupted by stops at roadside funerals that lasted up to 7 days. (Most deceased Chinese are cremated, except in outlying areas.)

The second, and most appealing, segment of "Country Driving" covers the six years beginning in 2001 that were spent in Sancha, a small walnut farming village in the mountains north of Beijing that had shrunk from a population of 300 in 1970 to less than 150. (About 90 million Chinese migrated from the countryside by 2001, primarily to new factory towns on the southeastern coast; these numbers grew to an estimated 130 million by 2008.) Here he rents a 3-room house ($40/month) amidst a community with an average GDP of $250/capita and 17 Communist Party members. Party membership requires a formal application, followed by meetings, interviews, evaluations, and self-criticisms that can take six months, or more - only about 5% are members, and some join primarily (eg. his neighbor, in 2004) to add business contacts and leverage with local officials. While there, Hessler becomes close to his neighbors and their young son (Wei Jia - only child in the village) and part of the community routines.

Hessler's reporting on the 'local' boarding school, 30-some miles away, is particularly interesting. Report cards are 30+ pages long - the evaluations begin using a 20-item list titled "Elementary School Rules of Daily Behavior." Examples: 1)"Be interested in national events, respect the national flag, respect the national emblem, know how to sing the national anthem." (Many rural villagers, however, don't even know the name of the current premier.) 2)"Cherish the honor of the group and be a responsible member of the group." Etc. Physical measurements are also included - height, weight, eyesight, hearing, lung capacity. At the end of the 2nd-grade and other report cards are a series of unfinished faces where children draw either a smiley, straight, or frowning face in response to self-evaluation questions such as "participates in labor for the collective welfare."

Hessler's education perspectives continue, reporting almost never meeting a parent without educational aspirations for his/her child - unlike America. Everything revolves around memorization and repetition (sometimes with no context - eg. memorizing instructions for Microsoft FrontPage XP), though their mathematics texts are far more advanced than their equivalents in the U.S. There is no ability grouping. Returning to Wei Jia, his education begins inauspiciously. Wei's kindergarten year (staying at his grandparents in another village) begins with him declaring "This place is no good!" - understandable since he had never been with a group of children before, and the school was in such poor condition it was closed the next year. Regardless, Wei's first school year quickly ended because of ITP (a bleeding disorder) that necessitated a trip to a Beijing children's hospital for gamma globulin treatment. Fortunately, despite the staff's aloofness and requiring payment in advance (Wei's parents had insurance that paid after-the-fact), Wei fully recovered, though one wonders what would have happened without access to Hessler's rented auto and advice from foreign medical sources. (The 'good news' is that China is now expanding health care and insurance for all.) ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Mary Paul marked it as to-read

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