River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

Last updated
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Rivertown cafe.jpg
A copy of Peter Hessler's book River Town in a Fuling restaurant
Author Peter Hessler
LanguageEnglish
SubjectChinese memoirs about two years spent in Fuling, China as an English teacher
Genrenonfiction
Set in Fuling District, Chongqing, West China
Published2001
PublisherHarper Perennial
Publication placeUnited States of America
Pages399
Awards Kiriyama Prize
New York Times Notable Book
ISBN 0-06-085502-9
Website Peter Hessler's Official Web Page

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze is a 2001 memoir by Peter Hessler. It documents his Peace Corps teaching assignment at Fuling Teachers College in Fuling, Sichuan/Chongqing [lower-alpha 1] , which started in 1996 and lasted for two years. [2]

Contents

Style

The book is a memoir of his experience in Fuling, told in first person. The language used is deliberately informal and aims to convey the beauty of the city and the poignancy of the stories. One of the features of the book is that most of its chapters can be read out of order without confusion. Most characters only appear inside a single chapter — or a few contiguous chapters — while just a few main characters appear throughout the book.

The main characters are:

The author uses many Chinese terms (normally romanized) to refer to common things or people, to make them look more typical of Chinese culture. For instance, foreigners are often referred to as waiguoren, girls are called xiaojies, porters are called stick-stick soldiers (translated literally from the Sichuanese term 棒棒军 bàngbàngjūn), and so on. [3]

Each chapter includes a short annex which describes Fuling's most notable places in the present tense, whilst normal chapters are set in the past and use the past simple, present perfect and past perfect tenses.

It is common to find excerpts from writing assignments given to Chinese students. Those short pieces and excerpts are pregnant with their stories, feelings and thoughts, that help the reader (as the author before) to discover hidden private stories about Chinese life.

The book recounts the author's experience in Fuling and describes stories of Fuling residents, including the priest of the Fuling Catholic Church, 李海若 (Li Hǎiruò). [4] His students came from deprived peasant homes in Sichuan countryside and tried to deal with a tough schooling system. Some of his students (mostly women) had abortions or committed suicide. [5] The author manages to go over the "unemotional veneer"[ citation needed ][ where? ] that the Chinese presented to the outside world and discover real China.[ citation needed ]

Environment

Fuling was very different from now in the two-year period 1996-1998.[ citation needed ] History also plays a role in the narrative, when Deng Xiaoping's death and the Handover of Hong Kong (1997) give the author the chance to exchange opinions with the locals and participate in the celebration of those events.

The university

The campus where Peter Hessler was teaching was called Fuling Teachers College and it used to be a college for teachers. As shown on the map found in the book, it was located in Jiangdong area at that time. The Jiangdong campus then became Yangtze Normal University and eventually it was shut down. Now it serves as a dormitory for the elderly. Nowadays, Fuling Teachers College, together with Yangtze Normal University, is located in the newly built Lidu (李渡镇) neighborhood.

Reception

The book won the Kiriyama Prize and it has also been a New York Times Notable Book. Marlene Chamberlain of Booklist concluded that "This is a colorful memoir from a Peace Corps volunteer who came away with more understanding of the Chinese than any foreign traveler has a right to expect." [6]

See also

Notes

  1. Fuling was initially a part of Sichuan Province, but was moved into the newly-established Chongqing Municipality in 1997. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sichuan</span> Province of China

Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau between the Jinsha River on the west, the Daba Mountains in the north and the Yungui Plateau to the south. Sichuan's capital city is Chengdu; its population stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors Qinghai to the northwest, Gansu to the north, Shaanxi to the northeast, Chongqing to the east, Guizhou to the southeast, Yunnan to the south, and Tibet to the west.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Three Gorges</span> Series of natural gorges on the Yangtze River in China

The Three Gorges are three adjacent and sequential gorges along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River path, in the hinterland of the People's Republic of China. With a subtropical monsoon climate, they are known for their scenery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chongqing</span> City in southwest China

Chongqing is a municipality in Southwestern China. Chongqing is one of the four direct-administered municipalities under the Central People's Government, along with Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. It is the only directly administrated municipality located deep inland. The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria, which includes several disjunct urban areas in addition to Chongqing proper. Due to its classification, the municipality of Chongqing is the largest city proper in the world by area, though it does not have the largest urban area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuling, Chongqing</span> District in Chongqing, Peoples Republic of China

Fuling District is a district in central Chongqing, China. As the second largest city in Chongqing, the area is known for zha cai, a hot pickled mustard tuber, as well as serving as the location of former U.S. Peace Corps teacher Peter Hessler's best-selling memoir River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sichuan University</span> National public university in Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Sichuan University (SCU) is a public university in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. The university is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.

Chongqing Normal University is one of the major public research universities in Chongqing, China. Founded in 1954 as East Sichuan Normal School, it is one of the institutions of higher learning in the People's Republic of China and the top normal University in Chongqing, China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chongqing Three Gorges University</span> University in Chongqing, China

Chongqing Three Gorges University, established in 1956, is a national comprehensive university in Wanzhou District, Chongqing, at the heart of the Three Gorges areas on the Yangtze River. It presently has a total enrolment of 13,000 full-time domestic students and international students; and a staff of about 1,000, including about 300 professors and associate professors, about 400 Master's Degree or Doctor's Degree winners, and more than 60 external part-time Professors and international teachers. CTGU has 14 teaching faculties. It has more than 70 specialties for 3-year students and 4-year students, which cover eight disciplinary domains. It has prominent advantages in the teaching and research of the specialties of marketing, international trade, environmental protection, folk art, languages and literature, physical education, tourism, biology, chemical engineering, ethnonymics, and occupies the leading position in China in some of the specialties and subjects.

Dawn Prince-Hughes is an American anthropologist, primatologist, and ethologist. She is the author of several books, including Gorillas Among Us: A Primate Ethnographer's Book of Days and her memoir Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, and she is the editor of the essay collection Aquamarine Blue 5: Personal Stories of College Students with Autism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sichuan Basin</span> Basin in Sichuan, China

The Sichuan Basin, formerly transliterated as the Szechwan Basin, sometimes called the Red Basin, is a lowland region in southwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains on all sides and is drained by the upper Yangtze River and its tributaries. The basin is anchored by Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, in the west, and the direct-administered municipality of Chongqing in the east. Due to its relative flatness and fertile soils, it is able to support a population of more than 100 million. In addition to being a dominant geographical feature of the region, the Sichuan Basin also constitutes a cultural sphere that is distinguished by its own unique customs, cuisine and dialects. It is famous for its rice cultivation and is often considered the breadbasket of China. In the 21st century its industrial base is expanding with growth in the high-tech, aerospace, and petroleum industries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southwest University</span> Public university in Beibei, Chongqing, China

Southwest University (SWU) is a public university in Beibei, Chongqing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Chongqing Municipal People's Government. The university is part of Project 211 and the Double First-Class Construction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baiheliang</span> Archaeological site in China

Baiheliang is a rock outcrop in Fuling District, Chongqing, People's Republic of China, that parallels the flow of the Yangtze River.

Peter Benjamin Hessler is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of four books about China and has contributed numerous articles to The New Yorker and National Geographic, among other publications. In 2011, Hessler received a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of his "keenly observed accounts of ordinary people responding to the complexities of life in such rapidly changing societies as Reform Era China."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yangtze Normal University</span> University in Chongqing, China

Yangtze Normal University is a full-time, comprehensive university under the administration of the Chongqing Municipal Government of the People's Republic of China. The campus is in Fuling District, at the conjunction of the Yangtze and Wu Rivers, the historic capital of the ancient Ba Tribe. It is the only teachers college in the ecological and economic zone of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area and the minority area in Southeast Chongqing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seattle Chinese Garden</span> Chinese garden in Seattle, Washington, U.S.

The Seattle Chinese Garden is located on 4.6 acres at the north end of the South Seattle College campus at 6000 16th Avenue SW, in West Seattle. The site has a panoramic view of downtown Seattle, Washington, Elliott Bay and the Cascade Mountains, including Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier. The first portion of the garden opened in the early 1990s.

The Chinese city of Chongqing has a history dating back at least 3,000 years.

Rivertown may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shudao</span> System of mountain roads in China

The Shudao, or the Road(s) to Shu, is a system of mountain roads linking the Chinese province of Shaanxi with Sichuan (Shu), built and maintained since the 4th century BC. Technical highlights were the gallery roads, consisting of wooden planks erected on wooden or stone beams slotted into holes cut into the sides of cliffs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baiheliang Underwater Museum</span>

The Baiheliang Underwater Museum or White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum is an underwater museum built around the White Crane Ridge of Fuling District, Chongqing. It is China's first underwater museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaoshou</span> Spicy sauce over steamed, meat-filled dumplings

Suanla chaoshou is a dish of Sichuan cuisine that consists of a spicy sauce over boiled, meat-filled dumplings. Suanla means "hot and sour," and chaoshou is what these particular large wontons are called in the Chinese province of Sichuan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuling Catholic Church</span> Church in City of Chongqing, China

Fuling Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic church located in Fuling District of the city of Chongqing, West China. Founded in 1861, the church has been subjected to the control of the state-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association since 1957. In the West, it's best known for the description given by Peter Hessler in his book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001).

References

Bibliography