Peter Hessler champions 'average people'
- Source: Global Times
- [21:06 July 26 2009]
- Comments
Third book
“Each book of the trilogy has slightly different themes. River Town was about geography, or a sense of place; Oracle Bones was about history, or a sense of time; and Country Driving looks at economics and development.
“I’m doing this through the role of the automobile in today’s China – I’m writing about the ways in which places have changed in response to the car boom,” Hessler said.
“For example, one part of this book describes a village north of Beijing, and how the village changed after the government paved their road.
“At the same time, the auto boom in the capital meant that more city people made driving trips at the weekend, and eventually some of the villagers shifted from farming to small business.
“I’m writing about these changes, how people respond to new economic opportunity, and how it shapes the village.”
As his focus shifts from rural to urban, the new book reflects the very contemporary phenomenon of Chinese people leaving the countryside and trying their hand at the new urban economy.
“Many Americans read Peter Hessler’s books before they spend some time in China. Lots of us are strongly influenced by his books,” said Nicholas J C Snyder, assistant press attaché to the US embassy in Beijing.
His words are mild but forceful, said Jessie Wang, a Chinese student studying in Switzerland.
“His humor can entertain Chinese and foreigners at the same time. I really admire his open-mindedness,” she said.
Hessler worked as a Peace Corps volunteer English teacher in Fuling, a town of 200,000 in southwestern China, a place where no Americans had lived for half a century.
Two years later, Hessler came up with his best-selling, critically-acclaimed River Town, a book that showcased the author’s ambition by including everything from Taiwan to the Three Gorges to Xinjiang.
From 1999 to 2002 he worked as a correspondent for American journals in Beijing, before producing his second book Oracle Bones.
Retracing the life of oracle bones scholar Chen Mengjia who committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution, Hessler’s narrative this time embraced the demolition of courtyard siheyuan, the adventures of his former Fuling students in China’s boomtowns and a Uygur with false documents gaining asylum in the US.
