BOOK REVIEWS

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

Peter Hessler's book about his life teaching at a small college in a poor, small town on the banks of the Yangtze is simply wonderful. The maddening contradictions, the essential, uncompromising Chinese-ness of the people and the place!  In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. Expecting a calm couple of years, Hessler at first does not realize the social, cultural, and personal implications of being thrust into a such radically different society. In River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Hessler tells of his experience with the citizens of Fuling, the political and historical climate, and the feel of the city itself.
Hessler has done everyone a favor with this book.  He allows us all to join him in making the transition from rank outsider to welcome visitor in China, over a period of two years.  It's an exhilarating experience.

Soul Mountain

Gao Xinjian is the only Chinese writer to have won a Nobel Prize.  This is his best book; about the beginning of the reform period in the 1980s and his travels in the "new" China.  His lyrical description of the amazing landscape, the villagers, the Taoist priests, the monks and the hermits who live in the deep mountains and back woods.  His irrepressible sadness whenever he encounters remnants of his childhood: ponds with floating duckweed, arched stone bridges, small town wine shops.  You will be dazzled by Gao's subtle sense of humor, irony, drama, mystery and his knowledge of history and folklore.

I found Soul Mountain to be one of those unique works of literature that immediately identifies itself as great for inexplicable reasons. I cannot compare this book to any other, either in terms of narrative sytle or content. Nonetheless, it is one of the most meaningful reflective texts I have read. It is about the author's journey of self-discovery, but along the way, you may have your own.

YANGTZE: Nature, History, and the River

As the central artery of a far-flung economic region, the Yangtze River carries four-fifths of China's waterborne traffic along its 3900-mile length. The river sustains 70% of the country's grain output, and some 300 million people live along its banks. But the "Long River," as the Chinese call it, is more than an overwhelming geographical fact: it is a collective memory that threads its way through China's consciousness. Shuttling back and forth over centuries, Lyman Van Slyke, professor of history at Stanford, ties the Yangtze to the history of canal-building, the rise of Shanghai from fishing port to commercial magnet, opium traffic, political infighting, the little-known saga of the tung-oil trade (which rivals the romance of silk and tea), sail designs of junks, and much else. The book is an admirable attempt to pierce the paradox of a people steeped in sense of place, yet ever on the move.