Available as Paperback
A very accessible, often laugh-out-loud funny, always illuminating trip around one of the most fascinating countries in the world
After living in China for five years, and learning the language, Peter Hessler decided to undertake an even more complicated endeavor: he acquired his Chinese driving licence. An eye-opening challenge, it enabled him to embark on an epic journey driving across this most enigmatic of countries. Over seven years, he travelled to places rarely explored by tourists, into the factories exporting their goods to the world and into the homes of their workers. Full of extraordinary encounters and details of life beyond Beijing, it is an unforgettable, unique portrait of the country that will likely shape all our lives in the century to come.
“Modern China has seldom been better explained than by Peter Hessler in this imaginative and illuminating book, one that gives us a steering wheel-up view of the country’s giddying economic and social transformation.”
Tim Butcher, Author Of Blood River
See more reviews
“Funny and brilliantly written. I have not read anything quite like it before on China.”
Chris Patten
“A masterly, learned, entertaining, kind and endlessly fascinating panorama of life in 21st-century China.”
Jan Morris
“An extraordinary, genre-defying book …Beautifully constructed … Hessler’s reportage is vivid.”
daily Telegraph On Oracle Bones
“Highly entertaining, hugely informative.”
good Book Guide
Peter Hessler
Peter Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007 and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize, and Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for Excellence in reporting.