In 'Other Rivers,' Peter Hessler chronicles his return to Chinese classrooms

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Foreign correspondent Peter Hessler taught in China during the country's economic boom in the 1990s, which he wrote about in his book River Town. Now, in Other Rivers, Hessler breaks down what it was like to teach there again more than two decades later. In today's episode, he and NPR international correspondent Emily Feng talk about what changed — and what stayed the same — with a new generation of students in China and how covering the country remains a challenge for so many writers and journalists.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Ampier's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Peter Hessler is a long-time foreign correspondent,
0:07.4	and he spent the early part of his career in China, where he'd already been teaching English for a bit.
0:13.3	His job took him elsewhere, but he stayed in touch with his students as the world, and namely China,
0:19.0	was rapidly changing. In 2019, he moved back to China and started
0:23.5	teaching at Sichuan University, where he realized exactly how different this country had become.
0:30.3	He's got a book out now titled Other Rivers, comparing the China he once knew to the one he's in now.
0:36.8	And in this conversation with NPR's Emily Feng,
0:39.6	he talks about how the previous China enjoy this massive economic boom, where people were
0:44.6	moving up, the latter, but the young people of today feel a bit disillusioned, despondent
0:50.5	that they'll never see anything like that in their lifetime.
0:55.0	That's ahead.
1:00.9	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
1:07.5	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
1:11.8	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or
1:17.7	wherever you get your podcasts. This is Emily Fang. I'm an international correspondent for NPR.
1:24.6	And I've actually spent the last couple of years covering China. And one of the
1:28.5	reasons why I wanted to be a foreign correspondent in China was because of the writing of Peter Hessler.
1:35.2	He first discovered China while working as a Peace Corps volunteer there nearly three decades ago. And
1:40.2	since then, he's become beloved for these wonderful, intimate profiles of the people and places
1:46.1	he's encountered in China, documenting this enormous country that always seems to be changing.
1:51.6	A change he revisits in his latest book, Other Rivers, a Chinese education.
1:57.7	So, Peter, it's amazing to talk to you because you've seen China both past and present,
	...

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