Other Rivers by Peter Hessler

OTHER RIVERS by Peter Hessler is subtitled “A Chinese Education.” Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker and has written several other award-winning travel texts. He has lived and worked in China over many years and this text describes the changes he sees given the roughly twenty years which have passed between his initial time in Beijing (2000 to 2007) and time in Chengdu (2019 to 2021). OTHER RIVERS offers an insightful perspective on the lives of many of Hessler’s former and current students and there is much here about what he learned while teaching, too. Hessler is particularly effective in evoking emotion, partly due to the excerpts of student writings which he includes. COVID was active during his second stint in China and Hessler explores and relates the Chinese societal response, detailing the activities and restrictions in Wuhan, even his correspondence with a pharmacist there. OTHER RIVERS received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly.