River Town by Peter Hessler

River Town is one of the most thoughtful travel books I’ve read. It balances observation of daily life with deeper reflections on culture, history, and society without feeling performative. After finishing it, I immediately bought another of Hessler’s books and read several of his long-form pieces for The New Yorker.

The book follows Hessler’s two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling, a city along the Yangtze River in China. He taught English at a teachers’ college and was likely the first American many residents had seen in over fifty years due to China’s long period of isolation after 1949. The first half sets the scene of daily life: misunderstandings with students, run-ins with local bureaucracy, and small exchanges with people around the city. By the second half, Hessler is more at ease, exploring deeper layers of Chinese history and culture.

Despite the local authorities’ cautious attitude toward outside influence, Hessler is given surprising freedom in how he teaches. His role as an English and American literature teacher turns out to be especially important — ironic considering it’s the one area packed with social and political commentary. He includes many of his students’ free-writing exercises, which reveal their underlying thoughts on a range of subjects and how differently they approach ideas we might consider “normal” in America. This ended up being one of my favorite parts of the book.

Hessler is a skilled writer; his goal was to become a narrative nonfiction writer and he’s been publishing in The New Yorker ever since. You can tell he’s dedicated to his craft, carrying a notebook and writing daily. An example passage:

“One river is all about origin; the other, destination: this is what defines the contrast in their personalities. The Yangtze in its size and majesty seems to be going somewhere important, while the Wu in its narrow swiftness seems to have come from someplace wild and mysterious; and the faint forms of its distant hills suggest that the river will keep its secrets.”

At the same time, Hessler is analytical, noting subtle cultural details and reflecting on their broader significance. For example:

“It was a vague place — even time was uncertain here. All of China is on one time zone, which meant that in Xinjiang the sun didn’t rise until eight or nine o’clock and it set after ten at night. Most of the people followed a more practical schedule, based on a mythical local time zone that was two hours later than the one in Beijing, but all of the government offices and state-run transportation followed the official standard time. It was the perfect symbol of the divide between the government and the governed, both of them living in the same place but going about their separate routines a full two hours apart.”

I appreciate the balance between storytelling and reflection. With travel books, it often feels like you have to choose between description and narrative; too much description can get dry, and too many anecdotes can feel shallow. A few chapters drag a bit, particularly the section on the river and Three Gorges Dam, but given how monumental that project is, it makes sense that he couldn’t skip it.

Hessler writes honestly; he’s warm and empathetic towards Fuling, its people, and Chinese culture, but he doesn’t shy away from criticism of political or social norms. Unlike some travel writers, whose biases seep through the page, you can tell Hessler is genuinely trying to understand the society he’s in. He is upfront that this book captures a specific time and that China’s future could look very different.

River Town is longer and more dense than lighter, humorous travel books like The Sex Lives of Cannibals or In a Sunburned Country. I also hadn’t read many travel books set in China, so it was cool to travel vicariously in a place with such a long and layered history.

Hessler wrote three other books drawing on the ten-plus years he spent in China. I picked up Oracle Bones and am excited. From what I’ve heard, River Town focuses more on Hessler’s personal experiences, while Oracle Bones takes a broader view, tracing Chinese history and society. I’m looking forward to reading it and seeing how the two books compare.