River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

#563
Title: River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Author: Peter Hessler
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 2006
432 pages

Hessler, already a published travel writer in his late 20's, set out for a two-year stint in Sichuan as a college English literature instructor for the Peace Corps. Here he describes his two years and gradual acculturation. Hessler neither vilifies nor romanticizes the people with whom he interacts, and the result is a highly readable memoir/travelogue that includes both humor and insight. Read with Wang Gang's English for a semi-fictionalized Chinese perspective on English teachers and rural life in the Uigher areas of China during the cultural revolution.