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 into a radically different society - surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how major events such as the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the controversial construction of the Three Gorges Dam have affected even the people of a remote town like Fuling.

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 into a radically different society - surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how major events such as the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the controversial construction of the Three Gorges Dam have affected even the people of a remote town like Fuling.

Poignant, thoughtful and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a place caught mid-river in time, much like China itself- a country seeking to understand both what it was and what it will one day become.

Author’s Note

  PART I

 ONE: Downstream

The City

 Two: Shakespeare with

Chinese Characteristics

Raise the Flag Mountain

 THREE: Running

The White Crane Ridge

FOUR: The Dam

The Wu River

 FIVE: Opium Wars

White Flat Mountain

 six: Storm

  PART II

SEVEN: Summer

 The Priest

EIGHT： Chinese Life

The Restaurant Owner

  NINE: Money

 The Teacher

TEN: Chinese New Year

  The Land

ELEVEN: Spring Again

  The River

TWELVE: Upstream

 Acknowledgments