I love books like this. Written with love for stories, and build on stories upon stories. And it makes you reflect on your own life too. While I was reading this, I thought: Wow, Hessler lived in China in such an amazing time, from 1995 to 2006 (when this book was published). There were no smartphones yet, let alone WeChat, and the country was still developing insanely fast, a process that has now slowed down. People, especially twenty-somethings, were still discovering their place in the world, or more specifically; in China.

And it’s easy to envy Hessler. But then I thought about how such big changes only become clear after a decade or two. And it reminded me to appreciate living in China now. Like Hessler, I’m also meeting lots of Chinese people, and because like Hessler, I can talk Chinese now, I can also get to know the stories they hold.

The book isn’t contemporary, and yet Hessler’s China is also my China, with its ‘jiade’ and ‘chai nar’, leaving your hometown, and money before babies. Hessler is a great noticer, sensitive to people and what they say, how they say it, and connect that to bigger themes. He is also a long-form journalist, and sometimes this gets in the way. Too much reporting and facts packed together, and the parallel of archeology and especially Chen Mengjia or Polat never really ends anywhere.

But still, this is a book that is great not just if you’re interested in China, but humans in general.

Review to follow

There are parts I loved, and some are dry and not very interesting. There is some great humor, and he has a great curiosity for everything Chinese, history, the language, the expats, the young people he teaches english, the culture.

Read as an audiobook. As with his book on Egypt, there’s a framing narrative linking the experiences of the present everyday to ancient artefacts, this time the Oracle Bones of the Shang dynasty. The exploration of the ancient, through interviews with archaeologists, comes across as interesting but less compelling than the “slice of life” into industrializing China - as explored through the eyes of Hessler, an American journalist scraping a life in Beijing, Uighur money-changer who dreams of becoming a US citizen, a young couple from the country seeking better prospects and a 20-something educated woman working for factory businesses in the “overnight city” of Shenzhen. There’s also interviews with people who survived the Communist purging of educated “troublemakers”, documentation of the tearing-down of an ancient traditional-style villa, police crackdowns and a range of other incidental events.

I love the kind of journalism that Hessler brings in this book. He almost reminds me of Kapuściński. Hessler is probably not as good as a writer technically, Kapuscinski's writing tends to be very lyrical and poetic, Hessler's is simpler and unpretentious. And it turns out that Hessler is my favorite writer. I think Hessler has a lot more success in being open minded, in his compassion, his connection, his understanding, love, and appreciation of the world he is writing about. He is extremely honest and a bit unconventional as a journalist. Definitely someone I admire.

At some point while reading this book, you will suddenly find China not so foreign. Part of it is because, Hessler, with his empathy, shows that, the people the struggle the psychology, are almost universal. Sure the context is different, the nation is unique, but humans are humans, with all shades of shit and glory. Another part of it, you will see, that China has been changing, and changing so fast, that it is a good example, better than other countries at modern time I think, of how nothing is eternal.

I always enjoy reading Peter Hessler. He provides interesting history and intriguing personal stories. His writing provides a unique visual of Chinese life. I highly recommend reading any of his books.

(I suddenly realized, on reaching page 454, what it was about this book..., this author.... Though the writing is non-fiction, it was like reading Borges...)

This is a beautiful, surprising, and stunningly good book -- much richer than one could imagine. For anyone interested in the context and texture of modern China, this is a must read.

複雜的交織和意想不到的串聯

Reads like a protracted New Yorker article, documenting the lives of the normal mainland Chinese that Hessler met while he was teaching outside Chongqing and living in Beijing. Great insight into the issues facing another group of politically marginalized Chinese, the Uighurs from Xinjiang. Great examination of life in China as it's lived by normal Chinese whose lives are given incredible scale by Hessler's description. Abounds in one of the hardest things to come by when talking and thinking about China: sympathy. Young author with a great eye for detail and a knack for impressive style as well as content. A must-read for Americans involved with China.

4.3。杂文集真是太太太太杂了

In this part memoir, Hessler explores China from a point in time where he was an English teacher and journalist — 1990s-early 2000s. He weaves in anecdotes of his students’ stories (Nancy Drew, William Foster Jefferson, Emily) with characters he encounters in Beijing (Polat) with interviews he conducts as a journalist (Mr Wang). One of central theme of this book is the mysterious suicide of Chen Mengjia, once an eminent oracle bones scholar who tried to prevent the simplification and the alphabetisation of the Chinese character. Through stories that weave in and out of Shang history and archeology in Anyang, we learn about the prejudice Chinese have towards people from Sichuan, migrations to bigger cities of Shenzhen and Wenzhou, the plight of Uighurs and the opportunistic alignment of the US post 9-11, the destruction of hutongs, and learning English through Voice of America broadcasts.

This was a satisfying read, if not too pedantic at times. I enjoyed the breadth of characters mentioned in the book but in many ways this book felt unfinished, just a snapshot of a country at a point in time and a random collection of essays that seem to meld together. This author was recommended by a b-school professor I greatly admire so I had to check it out.

The process of journalism and living overseas made me think of the times when I lived overseas and every encounter and conversation with a local could be deeply insightful. Romanticised times.

Excerpt:

Whenever a culture is in decline, anyone who has received benefits from this culture will necessarily suffer. The more a person embodies this culture, the deeper will be his suffering.

In Classical Chinese literature, the hero is essentially a bureaucrat. He organises and regulates; in battle, he is better known for making plans than he is for fighting. The early Chinese classics don’t linger on the descriptions of warfare. “You don’t get that attention to dirty details that you have in the Iliad and the Odyssey.” Keightley says. “It’s all about what the person does, what his talents are. It’s very pragmatic, very existential.” […] What the Greeks do is develop a hero cult, which is opposed to the ancestor cult. The Greeks are trying to build a city-state, as opposed to the lineage state, where you have a polity that is run by and for a group of powerful families.

The Chinese seem to produce bureaucracy as instinctively as the West creates heroes. The need for Western-style heroism — decision, action — might naturally produce war. Historians have long theorists that Europeans educated in the green classics were particularly willing to rush headlong into the First World War.

The Cultural Revolution is perceived in different ways: some blame Mao; others blame his wife and the Gang of Four. But a longer perspective views the period as a climax of China’s long disillusionment with its own traditions. For more than half a century, the Chinese had chipped away at their culture, trying to replace the “backward” elements. During the Cultural Revolution, this process became so fervent that it reached the point of pure destruction: people hated everything Chinese, but they also hated everything foreign.

Normal life seemed bleak and petty — a steady accumulation of possessions. She hated the way that people in Shenzhen thought constantly about real estate, buying an apartment and then trading up, and then doing it all over again. It was the worst of both worlds: trapped in these little spaces that you owned, but with the insecurity of constantly trying to move into the next one.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. I was amazed at how fast I tore through it.

The author was an English teacher in China in the Peace Corps, and then became a journalist based in Beijing. This book describes his experiences in China from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, focusing mostly on people and personalities, but also on the wealth of artifacts discovered in China during the last 100 years. These archaeological finds shed new light on the vast expanse of Chinese history, and also on the changes that have convulsed the Middle Kingdom during the last 100 years.

This is narrative non-fiction at its best. Hessler keeps his focus on people and their views of the world, and in the process helps you learn more about China than many academic texts might do.

Highly recommended.