Hessler spent two years (1996-1997) as an English teacher with the Peace Corps in the town of Fuling in the Chinese province of Sichuan. Fuling was a dirty, polluted city of 200,000 on the Yangtze River. A few years after Hessler was there, half the town was scheduled to be inundated by the flowage from the Three Gorges Dam. For the first year, Peter and the other Peace Corps teacher, Adam were the only foreigners in town. During the second year, two female teachers joined them.

The people of Fuling were not used to foreigners, and whenever Peter went into town, he became the center of attention. This never really changed, but through perseverance and his determination to learn Chinese he made friends and began to feel at home.

He taught English literature. His students usually found ways of getting the Communist propaganda they’d grown up with into their essays, no matter what the subject. And if he inadvertently said anything they considered demeaning to China, the entire class would hide their faces.

Hessler describes the geography, the farming, the food, the language, river travel, family life and many other aspects of life in China, including the trip he made over summer vacation. Hessler is a Catholic and, I think, a liberal, but he does a pretty good job of keeping himself out of the story except for his reaction to things Chinese.

It isn’t a book I would ever have picked up on my own, but I enjoyed it. The writing was good, if a bit slow-moving at times. I thought it went on for perhaps 100 pages too long.