Having lived in China for four years, I can
personally vouch for Peter Hessler’s memoirs in River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. It’s a spot on read that would be a great
introduction for anyone looking to move to the country, particularly the
“countryside”, or for anyone just curious about everyday life in the Middle
Kingdom. Though much of the China
Hessler describes is fast changing as globalization takes its toll, the
cultural attitudes exhibited by the people he and his fellow teacher, Adam
Meir, came in contact with, pervade.
Hessler joined the Peace Corp in 1996 and went to
live in the “small” city of Fuling on the Yangtze River in central China. He, together with Meier (who features
prominently in the book), went to work as English teachers at a local
university. The institution attended mostly with students from local villages, the city itself has nothing of the
more civilized infrastructure of Shanghai or Beijing. For the next two years, Hessler spent his
time not only teaching, but traveling in the surrounding areas, observing life
and talking with the locals, his language skills developing by the day.
