Country Driving
Three Journeys Across a Changing China
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
With eloquence and wit Peter Hessler takes us on the road less travelled, showing us a China rarely glimpsed by outsiders.
Hessler, Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker and contributor to National Geographic, tells the story of his travels through China over the past decade. From the fortified towns along the Great Wall in the north, to near-inaccessible hilltop towns and the entrepreneurial cities of the south-east, he explores the rapidly changing landscape.
This is the story of a nation modernising at great pace, where factory start-ups are a dime a dozen, and how the ordinary Chinese people are caught up in that modernisation.
'I learned far more about China overnight from Peter Hessler's wonderful book-and far more enjoyably-than from my ten years of journeys there. Hessler's not just a boon companion through the byways of the far north, a decade of village life and China's raw provincial commercialism; he bares the country's heart and soul with grace, humour and rare modesty.' Robert Macklin, author of Morrison of China
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest feat of penetrating social reportage, New Yorker writer Hessler (Oracle Bones) again proves himself America's keenest observer of the New China. Hessler investigates the country's lurch into modernity through three engrossing narratives. In an epic road trip following the Great Wall across northern China, he surveys dilapidated frontier outposts from the imperial past while barely surviving the advent of the nation's uniquely terrifying car culture. He probes the transformation of village life through the saga of a family of peasants trying to remake themselves as middle-class entrepreneurs. Finally, he explores China's frantic industrialization, embodied by the managers and workers at a fly-by-night bra-parts factory in a Special Economic Zone. Hessler has a sharp eye for contradictions, from the absurdities of Chinese drivers' education courses low-speed obstacle courses are mandatory, while seat belts and turn signals are deemed optional to the leveling of an entire mountain to make way for the Renli Environmental Protection Company. Better yet, he has a knack for finding the human-scale stories that make China's vast upheavals both comprehensible and moving. The result is a fascinating portrait of a society tearing off into the future with only the sketchiest of maps.
