It’s a testament to the complexity of the country that never-ending development and timeless non-change can exist so roughly blended. Just as likely, so much of it was also the same in 1911, and will still be in 2097. Daily I’m bombarded with how fast China’s rising/developing/growing/building/expanding, and yet so much of the way China was in 1997 is just as true in 2011. What struck me as most surprising about the book was its continued relevance, 10 years since being published and nearly 15 since experienced. The title jumped out at me as noticeably absent from the glut of words I’ve read about China since moving here, and I had no handy excuses for avoiding it any longer. That is until I was browsing the impressively stocked bookshelves of a friend of mine recently. In the years since though, it slowly drifted further and further down my list of books to read, until it was largely forgotten. China - it was all but handed out in the laowai welcome package. When I came to China in 2005, River Town was the book to read about living and teaching in this country. Lord knows I’m susceptible to such things, as it took me more than a couple years to stop spouting off facts learned from Jung Chang as gospel (worry not Changites, when last I visited an expat pub the doctrine was alive and well). I suppose I was worried that reading Hessler’s experiences might colour my own.

Next to Mark Rowswell, few foreigners in modern China are as well known. Rather, because for any post-Y2K laowai, Hessler is definitively known as the laowai. Not the book itself mind you, though a bit weighty for a travelogue, it reads quick and handles well.

I can’t be certain why it took me so long to pick up Hessler’s seminal work, but I think it was due to the weight of it. I realize I’m about a decade late posting a review of Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, but it was only recently that I finally took the time to read it.

River town hessler