Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Read Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory Storyline:

Amazon.com Review
New Yorker and in his books River Town, Oracle Bones, and now the superb
Country Driving, he's observed the past 15 years of change with the patience
and perspective--and necessary good humor--of an outsider who expects to be
there for a while. In Country Driving, Hessler takes to the roads, as so
many Chinese are doing now for the first time, driving on dirt tracks to the
desert edges of the ancient empire and on brand-new highways to the
mushrooming factory towns of the globalized boom. He's modest but intrepid--
having taken to heart the national philosophy that it's better to ask for
forgiveness than permission--and an utterly enjoyable guide, with a humane and
empathetic eye for the ambitions, the failures, and the comedy of a country in
which everybody, it seems, is on the move, and no one is quite sure of the
rules. --_Tom Nissley_


From Publishers Weekly
Starred 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.)

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