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River Town : Two Years on the Yangtze
by Peter Hessler
When Peter Hessler joined the Peace Corps, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching
English in the town of Fuling along the Yangtze River. But what he experienced—the natural beauty,
cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust into a
radically different society— surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how
major events like the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the
controversial construction of the Three Gorges Dam have sent tremors large enough to sweep through
China and reach the people of Fuling. Poignant, thoughtful, and utterly compelling, River Town is an
unforgettable portrait of a city caught mid-river in time, much like China itself—a country seeking to
understand both what it was and what it someday will be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Hessler grew up in Columbia, Missouri. He majored in creative writing at Princeton University and
went on to earn a master’s degree in literature from Oxford. After graduate school, he joined the Peace
Corps in 1996 and taught English at the Fuling Teachers College in Fuling, China, a small town on the
Yangtze in the Sichuan Province. He and another Peace Corps volunteer were the first Americans to live
in Fuling since the Communist revolution. His experiences inspired his writing of River Town: Two Years
on the Yangtze, which was awarded the Kiriyam Pacific Rim Book Prize in 2001.
Hessler has written for several publications, including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New
York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic Monthly, and National Geographic. Today, he is based in
Beijing and is a full-time freelance writer.
by Peter Hessler
When Peter Hessler joined the Peace Corps, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching
English in the town of Fuling along the Yangtze River. But what he experienced—the natural beauty,
cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust into a
radically different society— surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how
major events like the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the
controversial construction of the Three Gorges Dam have sent tremors large enough to sweep through
China and reach the people of Fuling. Poignant, thoughtful, and utterly compelling, River Town is an
unforgettable portrait of a city caught mid-river in time, much like China itself—a country seeking to
understand both what it was and what it someday will be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Hessler grew up in Columbia, Missouri. He majored in creative writing at Princeton University and
went on to earn a master’s degree in literature from Oxford. After graduate school, he joined the Peace
Corps in 1996 and taught English at the Fuling Teachers College in Fuling, China, a small town on the
Yangtze in the Sichuan Province. He and another Peace Corps volunteer were the first Americans to live
in Fuling since the Communist revolution. His experiences inspired his writing of River Town: Two Years
on the Yangtze, which was awarded the Kiriyam Pacific Rim Book Prize in 2001.
Hessler has written for several publications, including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New
York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic Monthly, and National Geographic. Today, he is based in
Beijing and is a full-time freelance writer.
