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    Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
    Unavailable
    Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
    Unavailable
    Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
    Ebook574 pages10 hours

    Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

    By Peter Hessler

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Hessler has a marvelous sense of the intonations and gestures that give life to the moment.” —The New York Times Book Review

    From Peter Hessler, the New York Times bestselling author of Oracle Bones and River Town, comes Country Driving, the third and final book in his award-winning China trilogy. Country Driving addresses the human side of the economic revolution in China, focusing on economics and development, and shows how the auto boom helps China shift from rural to urban, from farming to business.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 9, 2010
    ISBN9780061969430
    Unavailable
    Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
    Author

    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 Prize; Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and, most recently, Country Driving. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011. He lives in Cairo.

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    Reviews for Country Driving

    4/5

    211 ratings18 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Better maps....that is my only complaint. A funny book and an excellent document of life in turn of the 21st century China, otherwise. I have still to read Oracle Bones and then the trilogy is complete.
    • 4/5
      I have a hard time defining this book - is it sociology, or cultural anthropology, or contemporary economic history, or just journalism? Whatever it is called, I think it is terrific. It lets you be a fly on the wall in contemporary China. The first part is a road trip around the great wall of China. The second part is a peasant village turning urban and entreprenuerial, and the third is a factory town where peasants are turning into entrepreneurs.The author, a writer for the New Yorker and National Geographic, has lived in China for more than six years, and is a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese. I'm not sure how many dialects he knows, if any. He has the wonderful skill to adapt himself to an entirely different culture from Missouri where he grew up. This is his third book about China (the only one I have read so far).I find his reception into the village, and the newly entrepreneurial family amazing for an urban foreigner. He lived in the village with a Chinese friend, in a very primitive house unmodified for their tenancy. They just rented one that was available. The writer interfered in a good way to get medical advice from friends in the States, when the son of the family had a mysterious blood disease and there was a concern about the safety of the blood for transfusions. It turned out that the blood was ok.The writer's experience with bad roads and wild drivers caused him to get a lot of tickets and dents and bangs to the rented cars but his bravery was unquestionable. He builds a picture of rural to urban Chinese development which he likens to America's development of the wild west or Britain's industrialization in the 18th century. The amount of Government interference and control seems to be primarily on the village level, enforced locally by the Party Chairmen. The influence of the central government is a great deal less pervasive than one would have thought after growing up with the stories of totalitarian communism, and the memories of Tianamen square.This is live history with real people as actors, and it reads like a novel. A wonderful introduction to the huge transition China is making into an industrial power, and a magnifier on the evolution of a rural farmer into a Communist Party Member and business owner. I am going to read his other books pronto. His wife's interesting book [Factory Girls], which was also sociological reportage, was what introduced me to him.
    • 4/5
      Illuminating journey that is by turns narrative an journalistic, sympathetic and critical. Amazing to think that over seventy percent of the world's anything might originate from a single factory town.
    • 3/5
      4 stars for the content (lots of insight and amusement within), but the structure is such that I think these worked better as long-form articles; still, it's nice to have them fleshed out and collected in one place. Very much worth a read...
    • 4/5
      The section on learning to drive had me laughing out loud. Hessler was not making fun. He was just telling it like it is. I found it fascinating. Hessler's descriptions of the countryside were most interesting. I wasn't so interested in the factories as in the people themselves. I've read River Town and Oracle Bones. Peter Hessler is an excellent writer.
    • 5/5
      Another gem by my favourite contemporary writer about China. This time he tackles driving, life in the northern countryside, and life in the Zhejiang factory zones. I hope he writes more books because I would read them.
    • 5/5
      This is one of my all-time favorite books and I found it randomly on the library new release shelf. I went back and read his other books and they are all really great but this is the best one.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      All I want to do is go back - and soon.
    • 5/5
      Must-read for anyone even remotely interested in China. Hessler was the New Yorker's Beijing correspondent during the years covered in his book, and he writes about the country's rush toward modernization with a keen but sympathetic eye. The title of the book is a little misleading, as this isn't pure memoir but a blend of his personal experiences and thorough reporting; I actually prefer this, as it presents a more nuanced picture of the villages and factory zones he spends time in. One comes away impressed by all the material progress, but dismayed at the combination of rigidity and utter chaos that seems to characterize how the Chinese drive their cars and conduct their business.
    • 4/5
      Just a really wonderful portrayal of a side of China that most tourists - in which I include those of us who stay for six months or even a year - never get to see.
    • 5/5
      Must-read for anyone even remotely interested in China. Hessler was the New Yorker's Beijing correspondent during the years covered in his book, and he writes about the country's rush toward modernization with a keen but sympathetic eye. The title of the book is a little misleading, as this isn't pure memoir but a blend of his personal experiences and thorough reporting; I actually prefer this, as it presents a more nuanced picture of the villages and factory zones he spends time in. One comes away impressed by all the material progress, but dismayed at the combination of rigidity and utter chaos that seems to characterize how the Chinese drive their cars and conduct their business.
    • 3/5
      Country Driving A Chinese Road Trip was written by Peter Hessler, a staff writer at the The New Yorker served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007 and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. This book was a Notable Book of the Year for the New York Times Book Review. In this book, the reader is given a look at China from an anthropological view of a country that built the great wall to keep others out to a country building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world. The book is divided into three. The first book examines the very rural parts of China that follows the wall. The second one examines life in the village and the third book looks at the factory. The author tells his story through the trips he makes in cars that he rents in China. From the description of getting a license, driving lessons, and driving behavior this story is humorous but it is also quite serious and it examines Chinese lives in rural China, villages and in the factory. The author wants the reader to know what it means to be a Chinese citizen in China as much as he wants us to experience what it is like to be a journalist who lives in China. The style of writing is journalistic but also a feel of the “road trip”.

      I enjoyed this glimpse of China from someone who lived there for several years, spoke the language and was immersed in the culture. It was an in-depth examination of context, comparisons of Chinese culture with the United States, and was conducted through participant observer and long-term, experiential immersion in the Chinese culture. I felt much more optimistic that China is progressing and is moving toward a more capitalistic country that what it had been during the cold war years. I also understand more about why the Chinese do what they do that is different that what is done here in the United States. I would recommend the book or audio to anyone who wants to know more about China or understand Chinese ways.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book was ok, but the first part is definitely the weakest. I almost put it down and missed out on the strongest parts of the book.
    • 5/5
      This is the author's third book, after River Town and Oracle Bones. The three parts of the book describe two driving tours in northern China, life in a rural village north of Beijing, and life in a new factory zone in Zhejiang province, in southern China. One of Hessler's gifts as a writer is his ability to keep the focus on the people he meets, on their worldviews and the rhythms of their lives, without artificially removing himself from the story. The book is never sentimental, but it is both poignant and funny, and offers a nuanced and intimate view of two rapidly evolving Chinese communities (in the second and third sections). Hessler consistently provides context, so the book works both on the level of character sketches -- it is amazing how his interlocutors open up to him -- and as a broader explanation of how many different aspects of Chinese society work: transportation, education, religion, medicine, employment, local government, family. The superb craft of the book shows up in the way that no detail is wasted: information that Hessler shares in passing turns out to be central to the way a conversation or conflict plays out later, and when you get there, you feel the story emotionally, as well as understanding it intellectually. Hessler respects Chinese society without overlooking its flaws; he seasons his judgments with humility and a wry sense of humor. Reading this made me wish I could find such a cogent and revealing book about my own community.
    • 5/5
      This might be the best non-fiction book I read this year. After so many years living in China and investigating Chinese people, Peter Hessler obviously knows China much better than most of us, domestic Chinese. To me, he's also much more "friendly" than other western authors when encounters China nowaday issues. As most foreign journalists, he looked through the surface of society and pointed out the real problems. But most of time, he gave much understanding or "tolerance" to these issues because of his long stay in China and his profound knowledge of Chinese history, which makes his story and feelings in this book are very true even for a Chinese. In most of his story, Peter stayed very objectively and in a distance showing a good professional quality as a journalist. However, in some cases he reveals his emotions. One of them is when he sent his landlord's kid, Wei Jia, to the hospital. Another is when he talk with a painter girl in "art village". I like these personal moments here and there in this book very much. I also like his dry humor in his commence. And as a Chinese, it's fun to see how he translated some Chinese term into English, like "length of the dragon, from beginning to end", only a Chinese knows what it means, lol.
    • 4/5
      Peter Hessler's New Yorker articles are one of the highlights of this stellar magazine. He is one of few keen anthropological observers who reveal other people's lives without stripping them of humanity. Even hostile characters such as the "shitkicker" in this book's second part are depicted with charm so that even the "shitkicker" might approve of his own portrait. Hessler practices deep immersion reporting, living with and among the peoples in the periphery, rural China. His Missouri roots probably help in understanding country life as does his perfect command of Chinese.This book is divided into three parts. The first part "The wall" collects Hessler's efforts to get a Chinese driver license, rent a car and travel along the Great Wall (a red herring). The most interesting and hilarious elements are what the Chinese authorities consider important driving test topics. The Austrian driver license test, for instance, is obsessed with mechanics. Its ideal candidate would be an engineer who relishes in dis- and re-assemblying his car. The Chinese focus on civilizing candidate behavior: "If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should a) not tell him. b) reply patiently and accurately. c) tell him the wrong way." Hessler's account of the first generation of Chinese mass car ownership is a form of time travel. The short history of the Chinese automotive industry, based on a true communist interpretation of property rights to achieve capitalist means, warrants a fuller exposé.Part II is the heart of the book. Hessler and a friend rent a country village home, and Hessler is adopted into a rural Chinese family as "Uncle Monster". He shares their ups and downs, their scares, frustrations and successes. One of the little marvels is how the Communist Party extends its tentacles into the last nooks and crannies of China, but in contrast to the destructive influence in most African nations, they seek to provide their people with services big and small. Corruption reigns, but at least more than a trickle falls down to the poor and the old. Roads, electricity, medicine, education - the Chinese government is slowly but surely reaching out to these destitute rural areas.Part III in contrast shows the greed of both capitalists (family entrepreneurs) and local kingpins. Hessler observes the rise and fall of a fringe bra ring factory. We meet the factory owners and managers, its skilled mechanics and the factory girls as well as the people who provide the infrastructure and services around the factory. I am a bit puzzled why he didn't integrate the presence of his wife Leslie Chang and her research about the same topic into the text. Did she travel with him on these journeys or not? Her non-existence during a reporting period covering multiple years is strange, a bit Victorian where the spousal unit's help was assumed but unacknowledged. After three books about China, we can look forward to his adventures in the American fly-over country.
    • 4/5
      Great insights from a shrewd observer
    • 5/5
      Hessler, a long-term China resident , takes driving trips throughout China, while observing both peasant life ( which is being transformed) and the new entrepreneurs who are transforming city life. His writing is excellent - William Least Heat Moon meets John Mcphee., with a softened Paul Theroux. This is travel writing at its best.