River Town - Two years on the Yangtze - Book Review

In 2002 when we were waiting for our first daughter, the first book I bought and read after our file was sent to China was River Town by Peter Hessler. Little did I know that the red thread had drawn me to this book.

The River Town in question turned out to be my daughter's birthplace.

In 2004 I wrote this book review. Naturally enough this book is one of my favourites but having visited the town both for the adoption and again last year, it certainly in no longer the quiet little back water it was in this book - it is a town on fast forward.


River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze Peter Hessler, 2001 Harper Collins

We were travelling down the motorway from Chongqing airport to our hotel and our guide was describing Chongqing to us. She confirmed that on Sunday we would be heading to Fuling to collect our daughters from the orphanage. She asked, what did we know about Fuling, had we read River Town?

Had I ever! In fact it was the first book I read after our file requesting a child was on its way to China. With our quest for a daughter from China came a thirst for more information about China, and I started to read autobiographies set there. Most of the personal stories I was drawn to had been written by Chinese women, many of whom had endured harsh and difficult lives but survived. So when I came to River Town it had a different voice. It was male and it looked at China, or at least the life in this isolated small (at least in Chinese terms) town on the Yangtze River, through Western eyes.

At first I was slightly annoyed by this "male, western voice", but then I realised that the problem was with my mind set, not necessarily the authors, so I made a conscious decision to set aside my concerns about the voice and just enjoy.

And enjoy I did. While reading it I harboured a secret fantasy that our daughter might come from Fuling, an absurd notion really, but of course that fantasy did come true.

River Town is by Peter Hessler, who travelled to Fuling as part of the US Peace Corp in 1996 and as the title suggests worked there for two years. Peter now lives in Beijing and works as a freelance journalist. His articles on China have been published by Time, National Geographic, and the New Yorker, among others.

The book covers his life in Fuling, his teaching experience at Fuling Teacher's College, and his travels up and down the Yangtze River and other parts of China. It details his trials trying to learn the language, of which he had little when had arrived, and finding their place in the college and the society. It also touches upon social and environmental issues that he is aware of (for example the high rate of suicide, and of course the negative consequences of the Three Gorges Dam). It does not, however, mention child abandonment or adoption.

In particular, it gave me an insight into being a minority in a relatively insular society. At the time that Hessler lived there Fuling had little contact with Westerners. Most of the time he was one of only two foreigners living in the town. Hessler and his friend, Peace Corp worker Adam Meier, had a large degree of novelty value for some locals. They were isolated by lack of language and lack of understanding of the prevailing culture and looked physically quite different from those around them. (I was reminded of this aspect of the book when in Chongqing and as the only two westerners on the street, my hulking 6'61/2" husband attracted stares and much laughter, and then a very inquisitive crowd. Later my husband "caused' a bus accident when the driver braked to get a better look at him and two other buses rear-ended him. no one seemed to mind. There were no injuries and all the passengers got a good long look at my husband, but I digress).

For a Fuling parent, the rich description of daily life in Fuling and of the surrounding countryside is worth its weight in gold. Fuling barely rates a mention in most guide books. But Fuling does come across as a dirty, polluted and noisy town (the constant honking of car horns). Hessler vividly describes the steep streets, laneways, and the "stick stick" men (the men with the bamboo poles for carrying goods on. We saw many stick/stick men in Chongqing). He gives us a picture of the changing seasons on Raise the Flag Mountain and White Flat Mountain and the significance of White Crane Ridge (which unfortunately is lost from sight forever due to the rising waters cause by the Three Gorges Dam). The only thing I think it could have benefited from was some photographs of the area, rather than just leaving it to the word pictures. (This is a purely personal. I love to read biographies and travelogues and thumb through the pictures; also it would have been a valuable additional "resource" for our Fulingers).

Hessler's book also made me realise that despite the veneer of an emerging capitalist society, China is (was) still at its heart a communist country and as such there is still a reluctance to speak out on some issues, particularly to westerners. The college administration has strong Communist party allegiances (if not membership). Hessler provides a vivid description of the students "joy" (which to this reader appear by some to be heartfelt but on another level orchestrated) at the return of Hong Kong to the motherland and their mourning the death of the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping (who had grown up to the northeast of Chongqing).

I eagerly acknowledged to our guide that I had read River Town. In a slightly embarrassed tone she responded that Fuling was not like that. Did she mean not anymore? "Chongqing [of which she considered Fuling to be part, the whole area being a municipality] is very modern. The government has spent a lot of money here."

It was clear that from the way that she carefully chose her words--in the way that many Chinese people can, saying so little but meaning so much - that she found book slightly embarrassing, perhaps a slight on her "home town" and she did not want us to get the wrong impression.

And with that comment I readjusted my thinking slightly on River Town. Yes, it is a fantastic read but it does describe a Fuling of nearly seven years ago. Not a long time you might think, but China is rapidly changing. To take assume Hessler's depiction is still completely accurate would be like looking at 1960s USA (or any other western country) and saying that is how it still is now, when infact it is a "generation" later. The Fuling of the book is isolated --to get to Chongqing took 6 hours by boat --and thus has very little contact with Westerners. Now you can zip down the motorway in less than two hours. This is also pre-Three Gorges Dam Fuling. Physically Fuling has been changed by this massive project. Dykes have been built and low lying areas are being flooded. At the same time there has been increased investment and building. Before there were no traffic lights, now there are. Then there was no overseas adoption, now there is.

So read this book and enjoy this "historical" insight into a remote Chinese town, but don't assume that this is exactly how it is now.