claire_melanie's review against another edition
5.0
I've read all three of Hessler's books about China and they are quality. He's a fantastic author that spends years getting to know his subjects and the economic, social and political contexts in which they live. He's also a keen observer of others but also self reflexive and critically engaged with his own position. A smart, engaging, entertaining, informative and moving book.
margaretefg's review against another edition
3.0
Although it's a little disjointed, perhaps having been put together from different short articles, I enjoyed Hessler's portrayal of China's changing economy. Hevisits and gets to kno several families in different parts of China, and where he describe their stories, the book is lively and offers a look into the rapid change people inChina are facing and how they make sense of it.
scmuench's review against another edition
5.0
I am really enjoying this book and learning so much about China.
mariocomputer's review against another edition
5.0
Another gem by my favourite contemporary writer about China. This time he tackles driving, life in the northern countryside, and life in the Zhejiang factory zones. I hope he writes more books because I would read them.
anneke_b's review against another edition
3.0
I really loved River Town by the same author, so based on that I wanted to read this book. While it was at times as interesting, there were also pages full of details that I just could not care less about. Overall, it was an enjoyable, but rather slow read. I have some new insights about life in China, and that was the foremost reason why I picked up this book.
pldean's review against another edition
4.0
I really liked Hessler's voice. He made me much more sympathetic to China and its people than other things I've read.
davybaby's review against another edition
4.0
I initially read Hessler's first book, River Town, because I had a free copy and was about to go to China. Which is probably part of why I liked it so much, and why I've liked his more recent Oracle Bones. But with Country Driving, I've realized that the fella's just a damn good writer. He writes about the people with a sympathy and respect that carries over to the reader, but he doesn't ignore the absurdity and sad state of much of the government and country.
Granted, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't been to China (delighting in his hilarious and true descriptions of Chinese driving). However, this is also and excellent travel book/cultural study. If you have any interest in post-Mao China or just want to read a high-quality travel book, I'd strongly recommend it.
Granted, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't been to China (delighting in his hilarious and true descriptions of Chinese driving). However, this is also and excellent travel book/cultural study. If you have any interest in post-Mao China or just want to read a high-quality travel book, I'd strongly recommend it.
travelgirlut's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this glimpse into life in various parts of China. The humor was subtle, which was nice. Everyone the author talks about is given so much life and humanity, which makes you feel like you know and understand them. My only complaint is that there were no pictures to go along with the great descriptions, at least not in my ebook. I'm glad Hessler has written 2 more books about China, because I want to read more!
lpm100's review against another edition
5.0
The world is such a huge place with so many things that one wants to study that is impossible to do it all in a single lifetime.
But, the observations of sufficiently astute authors ("des vies possibles") are one way to do that.
And in that way, Peter Hessler is an excellent choice.
°°°On the one hand (good)....the author is:
1. A very perceptive/ insightful observer of events;
2. Possessed of the skill of writing;
3. Able to talk to Chinese people in their own language;
4. Politically neutral (!): The book does not devolve into a bunch of preaching about "democracy"/"human rights" and Irreducibly Complex China is not turned some type of tool with which to flagellate American/Western society.
His strategy employs one that extremely few books about China do:
1. Talk to one or two actual Mainland Chinese people and try to figure out what is going on on the ground before writing about it, and avoiding Bed-of-Procrustes-like discussions/sociological speculation. (He writes about: truck drivers, farmers, restaurant workers, museum guides and human beings of any other kind conceivable.)
2. Try to get a representative sample of people to present to the reader. (No, the rest of the country does not look like Shanghai. No, not everybody throughout the country speaks like people from Beijing. Yes, there are languages there other than Mandarin and Cantonese.)
°°°On the other hand (not so good): A generation in China is about two years and six months.
And so even though the author was extremely perceptive in his observations of current events, as of the time of this review his observations are on events from ~5-8 generations ago. (The book was published in 2010 about events that happened between 2001-2009.)
Some of the educational subtext of Hessler's observations:
1. China is too big to be knowable.
2. The assimilation of so many people over such a large area was something that happened over thousands of years--and not perfectly evenly. (Even though there is one tribe referred to as "Han" they're actually quite racially heterogeneous.)
3. Coastal cities and the countryside are two very different things.
4. The Great Wall is not one thing (and it never was), and was not built at one time/by one dynasty. Much of the knowledge around it is pure mythology. (This is actually covered in another book by Julia Lovell. "The Great Wall.")
5. The picture of China that Hessler gives us is of a huge, dynamic, AWESOMELY corrupt country/civilization that is finding out what it wants to be after MANY centuries of self-induced stagnation and one long century of self doubt.
6. There is a massive population shift from villages to cities, and with all of the accompanying stresses.
7. The Northern and Southern parts of the country are very different things, with different people and different results... Owing to geography. (And in this way, the book is an upgrading of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel.")
8. History is not necessarily written by victors OR conquered, but by people who can write.
-In the case of the Mongolians, they did not write things down and so later Chinese historians rewrote history to make Genghis Khan Chinese and the Mongolian Empire the Yuan Dynasty. (Mongolians stayed Mongolian in Mongolia Proper..... became Buryats in Russia and Hazara in Afghanistan.)
-In the case of Jews, they have been conquered many times and without a state for nearly 2,000 years. But, what they do have is The Rabbinate (=a class of writers, par excellence).
9. Being Chinese is a religion in its own right--same as being Muslim or Catholic. (p.263). There are just so many strange superstitions and most people follow them, but can't tell you exactly where they come from. (Why people should not eat cold foods during a menstrual period/ which times of the day are bad for drinking fluids/name changes from "unlucky" to "lucky" names.)
Falun Gong certainly did not come out of nowhere, and if it was not that group that arose out of a large number of superstitious / folksy people, it would have just been another.
10. From the author's description of Wenzhou, I conclude that: China is the world's most capitalist country. Nothing but brutal supply and demand calculus, and if employers do not want to hire people that are too short or too dark or from the wrong province then they will tell you directly.
Wages for men versus wages for women (for the identical job) are posted clearly and directly.
"No HR indirection or subtlety."
11. The China that Hessler describes (and the one that I know) is similar to Chicago: a place that is super-duper corrupt - - and yet things still get done.
12. The sale of land finances much of the budget for local governments, and so they have every reason in the world to support unsustainably high real estate prices. That problem had not been solved as of 10~15 years later.
13. It really is odd how the financing of the New China is done on the backs of farmers and small business people. (These are the ones who actually put up their life savings in order to make businesses that either live or die. They are also the ones that get paid for their land at pennies on the dollar.)
And in that way, it is the same as much of the rest of the world where wealthy people are actually financed by people that are much poorer than they are
*******
I do wonder:
1. Is there any such thing as a low stress, simple form of government? And why have Chinese people not figured it out in spite of having over two millennia so to do? (The events related to the election of a party secretary were just... weird.)
2. If there is a real estate crash, will this all come crashing to a halt? Everybody's been waiting for the crash to happen for a very long time, and it has not. (As of 5 years ago, when I lived there, the price of a house was 30 years of income.)
3. Why Mr Hessler had such a hard time finding places to shower. And, why he insisted on living off of Coke and Dove bars.
Of the book:
1. Hessler has grown a lot as a writer. I read another book that he wrote called "River Town," and he spent a lot of time in that book complimenting himself about how good his Chinese was. He seems to have gotten over that this go around and focuses on showing the conversations that he was able to understand and participate in.
2. It's of a piece with at least two other books that I have read: "The Chinese," by Jasper Becker and "Factory Girls," by Leslie Chang.
They, too, tried to show a picture of a China that is developing, in flux, and finding itself by showing you the story through the eyes of people that are involved in life there.
3. This travelogue is simultaneously many things: A little bit of history. A little bit of documentary. A very little bit of the experiences of foreign businesses trying to get a footprint in China.
4. NO INDEX.
Verdict: This is not a bad book, and its being as dated as it is makes me recommend it at the price of $1.
But, the observations of sufficiently astute authors ("des vies possibles") are one way to do that.
And in that way, Peter Hessler is an excellent choice.
°°°On the one hand (good)....the author is:
1. A very perceptive/ insightful observer of events;
2. Possessed of the skill of writing;
3. Able to talk to Chinese people in their own language;
4. Politically neutral (!): The book does not devolve into a bunch of preaching about "democracy"/"human rights" and Irreducibly Complex China is not turned some type of tool with which to flagellate American/Western society.
His strategy employs one that extremely few books about China do:
1. Talk to one or two actual Mainland Chinese people and try to figure out what is going on on the ground before writing about it, and avoiding Bed-of-Procrustes-like discussions/sociological speculation. (He writes about: truck drivers, farmers, restaurant workers, museum guides and human beings of any other kind conceivable.)
2. Try to get a representative sample of people to present to the reader. (No, the rest of the country does not look like Shanghai. No, not everybody throughout the country speaks like people from Beijing. Yes, there are languages there other than Mandarin and Cantonese.)
°°°On the other hand (not so good): A generation in China is about two years and six months.
And so even though the author was extremely perceptive in his observations of current events, as of the time of this review his observations are on events from ~5-8 generations ago. (The book was published in 2010 about events that happened between 2001-2009.)
Some of the educational subtext of Hessler's observations:
1. China is too big to be knowable.
2. The assimilation of so many people over such a large area was something that happened over thousands of years--and not perfectly evenly. (Even though there is one tribe referred to as "Han" they're actually quite racially heterogeneous.)
3. Coastal cities and the countryside are two very different things.
4. The Great Wall is not one thing (and it never was), and was not built at one time/by one dynasty. Much of the knowledge around it is pure mythology. (This is actually covered in another book by Julia Lovell. "The Great Wall.")
5. The picture of China that Hessler gives us is of a huge, dynamic, AWESOMELY corrupt country/civilization that is finding out what it wants to be after MANY centuries of self-induced stagnation and one long century of self doubt.
6. There is a massive population shift from villages to cities, and with all of the accompanying stresses.
7. The Northern and Southern parts of the country are very different things, with different people and different results... Owing to geography. (And in this way, the book is an upgrading of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel.")
8. History is not necessarily written by victors OR conquered, but by people who can write.
-In the case of the Mongolians, they did not write things down and so later Chinese historians rewrote history to make Genghis Khan Chinese and the Mongolian Empire the Yuan Dynasty. (Mongolians stayed Mongolian in Mongolia Proper..... became Buryats in Russia and Hazara in Afghanistan.)
-In the case of Jews, they have been conquered many times and without a state for nearly 2,000 years. But, what they do have is The Rabbinate (=a class of writers, par excellence).
9. Being Chinese is a religion in its own right--same as being Muslim or Catholic. (p.263). There are just so many strange superstitions and most people follow them, but can't tell you exactly where they come from. (Why people should not eat cold foods during a menstrual period/ which times of the day are bad for drinking fluids/name changes from "unlucky" to "lucky" names.)
Falun Gong certainly did not come out of nowhere, and if it was not that group that arose out of a large number of superstitious / folksy people, it would have just been another.
10. From the author's description of Wenzhou, I conclude that: China is the world's most capitalist country. Nothing but brutal supply and demand calculus, and if employers do not want to hire people that are too short or too dark or from the wrong province then they will tell you directly.
Wages for men versus wages for women (for the identical job) are posted clearly and directly.
"No HR indirection or subtlety."
11. The China that Hessler describes (and the one that I know) is similar to Chicago: a place that is super-duper corrupt - - and yet things still get done.
12. The sale of land finances much of the budget for local governments, and so they have every reason in the world to support unsustainably high real estate prices. That problem had not been solved as of 10~15 years later.
13. It really is odd how the financing of the New China is done on the backs of farmers and small business people. (These are the ones who actually put up their life savings in order to make businesses that either live or die. They are also the ones that get paid for their land at pennies on the dollar.)
And in that way, it is the same as much of the rest of the world where wealthy people are actually financed by people that are much poorer than they are
*******
I do wonder:
1. Is there any such thing as a low stress, simple form of government? And why have Chinese people not figured it out in spite of having over two millennia so to do? (The events related to the election of a party secretary were just... weird.)
2. If there is a real estate crash, will this all come crashing to a halt? Everybody's been waiting for the crash to happen for a very long time, and it has not. (As of 5 years ago, when I lived there, the price of a house was 30 years of income.)
3. Why Mr Hessler had such a hard time finding places to shower. And, why he insisted on living off of Coke and Dove bars.
Of the book:
1. Hessler has grown a lot as a writer. I read another book that he wrote called "River Town," and he spent a lot of time in that book complimenting himself about how good his Chinese was. He seems to have gotten over that this go around and focuses on showing the conversations that he was able to understand and participate in.
2. It's of a piece with at least two other books that I have read: "The Chinese," by Jasper Becker and "Factory Girls," by Leslie Chang.
They, too, tried to show a picture of a China that is developing, in flux, and finding itself by showing you the story through the eyes of people that are involved in life there.
3. This travelogue is simultaneously many things: A little bit of history. A little bit of documentary. A very little bit of the experiences of foreign businesses trying to get a footprint in China.
4. NO INDEX.
Verdict: This is not a bad book, and its being as dated as it is makes me recommend it at the price of $1.