![]() Big things happen while he is in China (the Three Gorges Project is in full swing and Deng Xiaoping dies), but it is the everyday stuff that is so affecting. There are his students-a poignant, watershed generation who delight him to no end. There is this river city of steps pressed against hills there are ridgelines cut with ancient calligraphy and pictographs that disappear under water during the rainy season. There is the gentle knock of the croquet ball in the morning when the court below his window comes to life. Hessler’s writing is unselfconsciously mellow, a lazy pace that works admirably in conjuring up Fuling as a place. This account is a chronicle of the author’s days in Fuling and of a brief summer interlude of travel farther afield. In 1996, Hessler reported for his Peace Corps duty to Fuling, a city of some 200,000 souls astride the murky Yangtze River, which cuts through the green and terraced mountains of Sichuan Province. ![]() A two-year sojourn in a small city in central China yields this youthful, gracefully impressionistic portrait of a time and place from newcomer Hessler. ![]()
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