asia

Hessler's upfront honesty about what he liked and didn't like about Chinese culture as he experienced it makes this is a much truer account of China (or any foreign land) than a lot of "travel" and memoir books.

Hessler is not only a good writer, who writes compelling and lurid prose, but he is an honest story-teller, especially in telling his own story. What makes this book an especially good read for me is that he doesn't leave out the negative or the positive. This is a truly subjective account of HIS experiences in China as a teacher, as a Peace Corps volunteer, as a young man, and as an American. Hessler doesn't try to show a "real" China objectively - he knows well enough that it doesn't exist. All he can tell us is China as he experienced it, and that's exactly what he gives us, warts and all. I am especially grateful that he never shied away from commenting on the negative and the positive aspects of the communist China government and ideology as it affects the nation and the people, and also showing us how some of the Chinese embrace it totally, and others are not so keen on it and desire something more.

And because of that honesty, I can feel that I am there riding along with him. Thankfully, he took copious notes and kept a journal while he was in China - the insertions of his English student's writings are a wonderful addition to the book, and through them, we all get some of the story of the students he taught, and also a better insight into Chinese thought processes than we could ever know purely through description.

Hessler knows the importance of telling one's story, and letting other people tell their own story, and I enjoyed every moment of this book and was saddened when he left China, for I knew that was the end of the book.

I will look for more of Hessler's work. This book hooked me.

Modern China is a place ripe with ironies, and among the greatest of them is them is that the Chinese have no sense of irony. It takes an understanding outsider to appreciate these ironic idiosyncracies that Chinese themselves are so oblivious to, and a gifted and sensative writer to portray them without resorting to caricature or mockery.

River Town is the most honest and insightful portrayal I have read of China in the late 1990s. Although it takes a small town in Sichuan as its focus, most of Hessler's astute observations are applicable to the rest the country, from metropolis to village. The book is not so much a travelogue as a 'socialogue'.

Personally, having lived elsewhere in China during the same periods that the book describes in Fuling, I found myself nodding in agreement throughout the book, and laughing aloud in many a section. Hessler's characterizations, both of China and of how a Westerner changes after a few years in China, are dead on.

River Town is the best book available for getting a sense of what China is like, on the most basic level, and explains why we who live here simultaneously love and despise the place. If you are an old China Hand, you will love this book. If you are a total novice to the subject, you couldn't find a more accurate and enjoyable introduction.

This is a brilliant book. This young man came to China with an open mind and is fundamentally different from much of the young expatriate population here, both in terms of his intellingence and his goals in coming. (Typical personalities: "I'm a Loser Back at Home, but when I come to China I'm a Big Man on Mulberry Street." Another: "I'm Young and Bored and Trying to Convince Myself That There is a Communist Revolution Somewhere.")

Some books that have been written have also tried specifically to address the political issues of this vast country. It is more interesting to someone who is not a professional protestor/ academic to see what happens in practice when some of the Romanticized Sacred Cows of Academics are implemented in Real Life (see: Communism, Authoritarianism, Big Government). This is also not taken from the perspective of people that are constantly whining about Human Rights.

In my opinion, the author does a good job of not reinterpreting China in terms of some of these Sacred Cows, be they of whoever.

The prose is clear, elegant and not overwrought with detail. But the reading is not overly light, either. It's just the things that any person would think about if they came here to teach. Or that any person might want to know if they wanted a perspective of China independent of political slants of any type.