Country Driving

Peter Hessler's third in his China trilogy, and this third book is a story in three parts. They are quite distinctive parts too. Overall this is a fairly long read, at circa 550 pages, and it is a book that dwells in the minutiae, but it was minutiae that was interesting to me.

Speaking fluent Mandarin, as well as reading and writing do little to hide his foreignness, but offer him insights that others will never have. He is clearly a person who builds trust quickly as people are inclined to spill their life stories to him! He must have a way of quick connection and must have developed suitable questioning techniques for the Chinese psyche.

I will keep it brief, and stay away from the details, but the parts of the book consist of:

Part one - The Wall. Driving the small roads ostensibly following the Great Wall in it many fragmented parts. China is also undergoing a massive development in automobile ownership and development of industries around cars and roads. Using Sinomaps (the only Chinese map book that makes an effort) Hessler attempts to follow small roads, visit small towns, look around the Great Wall fragments. On the way he picks up hitchhikers, meets other people and shares their short stories, find historical points of interest and manages to layer in some basic history and context for where he is and who was there before him. Obtaining a Chinese driver's license provides pages and pages of entertainment, hiring a car provides ongoing amusement with the reportage of every far visit, every breakdown and every damage causing incident.

Part two - The Village. Hessler and a friend seek a 'writers refuge' - a house in a small village near Beijing, but beyond the suburbs in which to embed themselves (sharing but mostly separately). After searching they find a simple house in a simple village on the brink of modernisation. His landlord, wife and son become the key interface for this section of the book. In Sancha, Hessler makes friends and enemies, he helps and hinders the locals and writes about it all. Local government politics, the Communist Party and its involvement in village decisions, the system of land ownership, the hospital system, the police, Falun Gong, religion, farmers becoming businessmen, house alterations, family relationships. Little is sacred and Hessler reports it all.

Part three - The Factory. In this section Hessler visits an industrial area being established in advance of a new motorway. This is Chinese development on a large scale, described and removing mountains and filling valleys to make development land. Here he finds a factory in the very origins of setting itself up and he ingratiates himself with the owners and picks up the personal stories of them, their foreman and a group of workers. The factory makes two metalwork items, the underwires for bra's and the rings that make strap adjustment possible on bra's. Again he weaves in lots of information about land development, motorways & factories (manufacturing in general) as well as the personal stories of those noted.

So three quite district storylines, Hessler says researched over the period 2001 to 2009, during which a great many things in China changed. No doubt it has all continued to evolve and change at a great rate.

For me this equaled his first book and was superior to the second.

5 stars

Hessler is an excellent writer. I enjoyed this book very much, but slightly less than the first two offerings in the trilogy, River Town and Oracle Bones. Still, it's a great introduction to contemporary China and underscored my own experience traveling and working in that country.

I've read and loved Hessler's previous two books about China, but this is by far my favorite.

Hessler really knows China by now and does he ever have stories to tell! Sad stories. Hilarious stories.