Peter Hessler's China: River Town and Oracle Bones

RIVER TOWN: Two Years on the Yangtze
Author: Peter Hessler 2001 402pp
My rating 4*
Started Dec 14, Finished Dec 19

Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China
Author: Peter Hessler 2001 489pp
My rating 3.5*
Started Jan 1 Finished Jan 5

Apparently it’s harder for me to convey what I like about a book than what I don’t – words are failing me as I try to express why I like River Town so much. River Town is more than an insightful and engaging account of the two years the author spent teaching English literature at a teacher’s college in the Chinese hinterland, primarily because of the window it provides into lives in “middle China”. Much of the drama of the book comes from Hessler’s attempts to learn Chinese (which he apparently knew not a word of before a two month crash course he received from the Peace Corps when he first arrived in China) and to get understand his students and some of the people e.g. fellow faculty members and local tradesmen that he encounters in his daily routine. The story has a straightforward chronological structure which works very well, as the reader takes pleasure in his triumphs with the language and his concomitant ability to relate to the Chinese – the more versed he becomes in their language, culture and history, the more understandable and sympathetic they become. The vast differences between recent Chinese history and that of the west, particularly the US, become increasingly clear, for example after some of his peers, faculty colleagues born in the 60’s, reveal as if it were no big deal that starvation was the leading challenge of their childhoods in the midst of the Cultural Revolution.The parts of Oracle Bones that function as a sequel to River Town were for me usually the best parts – every progress report on his former students was heartfelt, humorous and revealing. Likewise the sections on Polat, the Uighur moneychanger and would be emigrant to the US. The chapters on the Beijing’s attempts to impress the Olympic selection committee and “Encapsulated Prime” matched anything in River Town. However, while Hessler has grown as a writer since RT, I found Oracle Bones slightly less satisfying than the first book, primarily because the narrative is less unified, consisting of several disparate threads, some of which have nothing to do with the others – many of the chapters could be rearranged without the reader noticing. Furthermore, the overarching story line, the tale of the Oracle Bones (the earliest extant examples of Chinese characters) and their discover and his sad fate under the totalitarian Maoist regime, for me lacked in immediacy compared to the story lines set in the present and failed in its purpose of uniting the whole. On the whole, though, the book is well worth reading and is a must read if you had enjoyed its predecessor as much as I did.