Publisher's Weekly Review
In his latest feat of penetrating social reportage, New Yorker writer Hessler (Oracle Bones) again proves himself America's keenest observer of the New China. Hessler investigates the country's lurch into modernity through three engrossing narratives. In an epic road trip following the Great Wall across northern China, he surveys dilapidated frontier outposts from the imperial past while barely surviving the advent of the nation's uniquely terrifying car culture. He probes the transformation of village life through the saga of a family of peasants trying to remake themselves as middle-class entrepreneurs. Finally, he explores China's frantic industrialization, embodied by the managers and workers at a fly-by-night bra-parts factory in a Special Economic Zone. Hessler has a sharp eye for contradictions, from the absurdities of Chinese drivers' education courses-low-speed obstacle courses are mandatory, while seat belts and turn signals are deemed optional-to the leveling of an entire mountain to make way for the Renli Environmental Protection Company. Better yet, he has a knack for finding the human-scale stories that make China's vast upheavals both comprehensible and moving. The result is a fascinating portrait of a society tearing off into the future with only the sketchiest of maps. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
This is American journalist Hessler's third travelog-memoir about present-day China, following his Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present. Here he writes of his multiyear journey across mainland China, from the interior farmlands to the heart of urban life there, living for a time with a family from the small but historical Sancha village. Through accounts of his day-to-day interactions, Hessler reveals the struggles of rural life amid the enormous modernization of the country and how the modest ways of life are slowly being erased by the lure of the market economy and big money. Hessler then travels to the coastal regions of Zhejiang, to the booming industrial city of Lishu, where he finds a cast of fascinating characters, including factory bosses, farm girls, and traveling troupes, their lives intertwining in a struggle to survive and adapt to the new life and philosophy of a growing consumer-driven society and an often brutally corrupt political system. VERDICT Hessler offers Western readers an intimate story of a much-analyzed but often misunderstood world; both lay readers and scholars will appreciate. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/09.]-Allan Cho, Univ. of British Columbia Lib., Vancouver (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
