Job & Edu

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.)

From Harper Perennial

Author : Peter Hessler
Binding : Paperback
DeweyDecimalNumber : 910
EAN : 9780060855024
ISBN : 0060855029
Label : Harper Perennial
Manufacturer : Harper Perennial
NumberOfPages : 432
ProductTypeName : ABIS_BOOK
PublicationDate : 2006-05-01
Publisher : Harper Perennial
ReleaseDate : 2006-04-25
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Customer Reviews

Rating:
Summary: The Best Non Fiction Book I've Read in a Long Time
Comment: I've recommended this book to a lot of people and purchased it as a gift for a student who spent a semester in China and a public school administrator who introduced a Chinese language program in a public school. This book gave fascinating insight into the Chinese culture and made me laugh and cry. Wonderful!
Rating:
Summary: a must for anyone interested in China
Comment: River Town is probably one of the best books on China written from a "waiguoren's" (foreigner) point of view I've read so far. It is also my favorite among the three China books by Peter Hessler. With regard to how beautiful and effortless the language flows, tender and detail-oriented descriptions and observations, and a general sense of pathos throughout, few other authors I've read come close to Hessler. Aside from the daily account of life in a remote river town in China, there are many thought-provoking and insightful passages that strike a deeper cord and attempt to see things beneath what they appear to be. Hessler's writing almost has a Chinese ink painting quality to it. Overall, a mesmerizing read.
Rating:
Summary: seeing Technology effect on China
Comment: The effect of technical changes are seen clearly by an American serving in Peace Corp. Gradual manmade changes on the landscape and people are described in first person accounts over a two year period
of living along he Yangtze just prior to the rising waters created by construction of the 3-Gorges Dam. The Author as a young scholar teacher gradually became integrated into the fabric of the
Rural Area in part by mastering Chinese Language basics with help of a tutor preceding and during his Peace Corp. Mission.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book that brought back some memories...
Comment: River Town Book Review (05-15-2010)
Much like the book China Road by Rob Gifford, another very young man but heavily loaded with Western ideals of personal religious upbringing, Peter Hessler of River Town is also strongly soaked in his Western cultural upbringing but he is not so close-minded and biased without ever questioning on his own earlier perception in view of his new encounter in China. Gifford had gone to China as a college lower division (sophomore) student attracted to China by writings from Pearl Bucks except Gifford could not be a missionary. Peter Hessler came to China as a college teacher under the Peace Corp volunteer program and engaged in teaching, not preaching. But most importantly he was open-minded enough to see, though very slowly, how the Chinese people, particularly, his students and his fellow teachers view their country.

It is worth noting that the strongest gift Hessler possessed while in China was his ability to observe critically not only what he sees in China but the contrasting Western views also critically as well. He noted how his students conducting
themselves in class, often very self conscious but he grabs the opportunity to introduce Western perception on various cultural ideas to his students. His students, most of them, are from rural peasant background, a background none of his American readers can truly appreciate. They are poor, POOR, and going to a teacher college is almost heaven sent opportunity not to be wasted. Some of his students came to realize Hessler¡¯s style approach to his teaching and the relation with his students¡¯ informal and sincere is a great way to build relationship with their future students.

The two fellow teachers at the college to teach Hessler Chinese are two very contrasting characters in their personality as well as temperament and they both became good friends at the end but not without a very difficult struggle between Hessler and the woman teacher, with surname Liao, who is a very strong minded person with her opinion and also deep conviction with what she believes. But after long, in fact, very long last both Hessler and Liao came to recognize the strong points of each other and becoming good friends. Readers may feel frustrated with Liao because of her rigidity yet a great movie buff of Charlie Chaplin satire movie of Adolph Hitler, The Great Dictator, but the ending relationship would undoubtedly ring a cheerful sounding bell in the mind of the readers. And this little dialogue between these two was one of the ¡°bridges¡± connected them.

There was a Catholic Father in his 80s and the readers certainly will adore this old priest particularly in the current world wide scandals of Catholic priest behaviors one would wonder why such kind of conduct is so prevalent in Western culture.

Hessler is a frequent jogger and hiker in the country side that brings him in contact with rural peasants and their families. Such encounters brings wonderful visits between him and the common peasants who often invited him to their house for tea or even meal and that is a common tradition Chinese do with people they like and rarely be discouraged by the humbleness of their homes.

Another daily routine of Hessler is his meals at the very inexpensive restaurants or roadside stand eating places from someone who brought simple, but tasty, food to sell on the sidewalks. But there were two ugly incidents Hessler had to confront, one was a woman who might be a part time prostitute, and the other was a small mid-aged shoe shine fellow, and these were the two incidents Hessler did not settle with kind words. While reading the incident between him and shoe shine small mid-aged man, I wrote my marginal comments in the book that Hessler was one who had gone to study at Princeton University and then two more years at Oxford, but could not take a more thoughtful gentlemanly approach toward this little fellow who clearly resented this wai guo ren (foreigner) privileges.

Throughout the book Hessler introduced Chinese expressions or words and one particular expression is bu dui (wrong, incorrect) often used by his Chinese teacher Liao when Hessler made a mistakes or said things she did not agree. But I would suggest to him, and other writers of this kind of writing, to introduce certain good and helpful expressions to Western readers. It is proper and respectful to address a college teacher as Professor Smith but it is not very respectful at all to address a teacher as Teacher Liao, in America or in China. The correct and respectful way in Chinese language is Liao Laoshi (ÀÏʦ¡ÖOld Master, Honorable Teacher). If insisted, a translation such as Master Teacher Liao . The word or character Lao (ÀϨT old) should NOT be literally translated as old in American-English when used as part of a respectful title, because the word old, in American-English contains much negative, weak, bad and undesirable quality implications while the opposite is true in Chinese language; it means experience, wisdom, knowledge and maturity through life-long years. In fact, this writer of this review would be happy to testify that in his retirement years he has had much more opportunities to reflect and think as deeply as he knows how and study as widely as he is able to on various subjects he could not have done when a younger person, say at age of 50 or even 65! However, one universal aspect of not being readily to consider innovative new ideas is quite often brushed aside in many folks in more advanced age, perhaps, undesirable characteristics of aging.

(Footnote: I have read Hessler's second book Oracle Bones, so the 5-Star rating is saved for that book!)

Rating:
Summary: River Town: Two Years On The Yangtze
Comment: An excellent read. Very informative and gives one a sense of what it is like living in China.