An American journalist living in Beijing offers an intriguing odyssey through twenty-first-century China as seen through the eyes of a handful of ordinary people, including Polat, a member of an ethnic minority seeking freedom in the U.S.; Anne, a migrant factory worker; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar [...]

A New York Times Notable BookWinner of the Kiriyama Book PrizeIn the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and gro[...]

An absorbing, original, and ambitious work of reportage from the acclaimed New Yorker correspondentDuring the past decade, Peter Hessler has persistently illuminated worlds both foreign and familiar--ranging from China, where he served as The New Yorker's correspondent from 2000 to 2007, to southwes[...]

When Peter Hessler went to China in the late 1990s, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching English in the town of Fuling on the Yangtze River. But what he experienced - the natural beauty, cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust in[...]