But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. Dana Van Nest, Amazon.In the heart of China's Sichuan province lies the small city of Fuling. After reading River Town, you'll have one, too. with a new perspective on modern China and its people. It's a pleasure to read of his (mis)adventures. His observations are evocative, insightful, and often poignant-and just as often, funny. Over the course of two years, Hessler and Meier learn more they ever guessed about the lives, dreams, and expectations of the Fuling people. not just the play itself but everything that had ever been written about it. Everything had to be more clever than that. You couldn't simply say: I don't like Hamlet because I think he's a lousy person. You couldn't have said something like that at Oxford. I think he is too sensitive and conservative and selfish.' Hessler marvels, One student says of Hamlet, 'I don't admire him and I dislike him. As an English teacher, Hessler is delighted with his students' fresh reactions to classic literature. A poor city by Chinese standards, the students at the college are mainly from small villages and are considered very lucky to be continuing their education. and so Fuling appears like a break in a dream-the quiet river, the cabins full of travelers drifting off to sleep, the lights of the city rising from the blackness of the Yangtze,' says Hessler. 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. 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. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. 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.

River Town by Peter Hessler