| River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze Peter Hessler, 2001 Harper Collins |
| A personal perspective by Lisa Wilson, mother of Emily Fu Deshu Turner (formerly Fu De Shu), forever day 24 August 2003. Lisa, her husband Stewart and Emily live in Canberra, Australia. |
| We were travelling down the motorway from Chongqing airport to our hotel and our guide was describing Chongqing to us. She confirmed that on Sunday we would be heading to Fuling to collect our daughters from the orphanage. She asked, what did we know about Fuling, had we read River Town? |
| Had I ever! In fact it was the first book I read after our file requesting a child was on its way to China. With our quest for a daughter from China came a thirst for more information about China, and I started to read autobiographies set there. Most of the personal stories I was drawn to had been written by Chinese women, many of whom had endured harsh and difficult lives but survived. So when I came to River Town it had a different voice. It was male and it looked at China, or at least the life in this isolated small (at least in Chinese terms) town on the Yangtze River, through Western eyes. |
| At first I was slightly annoyed by this "male, western voice", but then I realised that the problem was with my mind set, not necessarily the authors,so I made a conscious decision to set aside my concerns about the voice and just enjoy. |
| And enjoy I did. while reading it I harboured a secret fantasy that our daughter might come from Fuling, an absurd notion really, I thought. It was such a remote town and besides Australia had only had adoptions from Guangxi and Guangdong. It would never happen! But of course that fantasy did come true (and we now have 9 Fulingers in Australia, 7 of them in our hometown). |
| River Town is by Peter Hessler, who travelled to Fuling as part of the US Peace Corp in 1996 and as the title suggests worked there for two years. Peter now lives in Beijing and works as a freelance journalist. His articles on China have been published by Time, National Geographic, and the New Yorker, among others. |
| The book covers his life in Fuling, his teaching experience at Fuling Teacher's College, and his travels up and down the Yangtze River and other parts of China. It details his trials trying to learn the language, of which he had little when had arrived, and finding their place in the college and the society. It also touches upon social and environmental issues that he is aware of (for example the high rate of suicide, and of course the negative consequences of the Three Gorges Dam). It does not, however, mention child abandonment or adoption. |
| In particular, it gave me an insight into being a minority in a relatively insular society. At the time that Hessler lived there there was little contact with Westerners. Most of the time he was one of only two foreigners living in the town. Hessler and his friend, Peace Corp worker Adam Meier, had a large degree of novelty value for some locals. They were isolated by lack of language and lack of understanding of the prevailing culture and looked physically quite different from those around them. ( I was reminded of this aspect of the book when in Chongqing and as the only two westerners on the street, my hulking 6'61/2" husband attracted stares and much laughter, and then a very inquisitive crowd. Later Stewart "caused' a bus accident when the driver braked to get a better look at him and two other buses rear-ended him. no one seemed to mind. There were no injuries and all the passengers got a good long look at my husband, but I digress). |
| For a Fuling parent, the rich description of daily life in Fuling and of the surrounding countryside is worth its weight in gold. Fuling barely rates a mention in most guide books. But Fuling does come across as a dirty, polluted and noisy town (the constant honking of car horns). Hessler vividly describes the steep streets, laneways, and the "stick stick" men (the men with the bamboo poles for carrying goods on. We saw many stick/stick men in Chongqing). He gives us a picture of the changing seasons on Raise the Flag Mountain and White Flat Mountain and the significance of White Crane Ridge (which unfortunately is lost from sight forever due to the rising waters cause by the Three Gorges Dam). The only thing I think it could have benefited from was some photographs of the area, rather than just leaving it to the word pictures. (This is a purely personal. I love to read biographies and travelogues and thumb through the pictures; also it would have been a valuable additional "resource" for our Fulingers). |
| Hessler's book also made me realise that despite the veneer of an emerging capitalist society, China is (was) still at its heart a communist country and as such there is still a reluctance to speak out on some issues, particularly to westerners. The college administration has strong Communist party allegiances (if not membership). Hessler provides a vivid description of the students "joy" (which to this reader appear by some to be heartfelt but on another level orchestrated) at the return of Hong Kong to the motherland and their mourning the death of the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping (who had grown up to the northeast of Chongqing). |
| I eagerly acknowledged to our guide that I had read River Town. In a slightly embarrassed tone she responded that Fuling was not like that. Did she mean not anymore? "Chongqing [of which she considered Fuling to be part, the whole area being a municipality] is very modern. The government has spent a lot of money here." |
| It was clear that from the way that she carefully chose her words--in the way that many Chinese people can, saying so little but meaning so much - that she found book slightly embarrassing, perhaps a slight on her "home town" and she did not want us to get the wrong impression. |
| And with that comment I readjusted my thinking slightly on River Town. Yes, it is a fantastic read but it does describe a Fuling of nearly seven years ago. Not a long time you might think, but China is rapidly changing. To take assume Hessler's depiction is still completely accurate would be like looking at 1960s USA (or Australia or any other western country) and saying that is how it still is now, when infact it is a "generation" later. The Fuling of the book is isolated --to get to Chongqing took 6 hours by boat --and thus has very little contact with Westerners. Now you can zip down the motorway in less than two hours. This is also pre-Three Gorges Dam Fuling. Physically Fuling has been changed by this massive project. Dykes have been built and low lying areas are being flooded. At the same time there has been increased investment and building. Before there were no traffic lights, now there are. Then there was no overseas adoption, now there is. |
| So read this book and enjoy this "historical" insight into your Fuling child's hometown, but don't assume that this is exactly how it is now. |
| Changing Course by Peter Hessler, Time Asia, 2003 |
| Four years after completing his book, Peter Hessler journeyed back to the Chinese river town of Fuling, and found that his characters were writing a whole new story. His article, "Changing Course," describes this visit. |
| In this article, Hessler writes about the reaction River Town received from his former students, one of whom wrote to him: |
| "I think no one would like Fuling city after reading your story. But I can't complain as everything you write about is the fact. I just wish the city would become more attractive with time." |
| This mirrors our guide's reaction to the book. |
| However, Hessler notes that "locals" reactions could be both offended and grateful at the same time. |
| In fact at the English faculty of the Fuling Teachers' College, where Hessler taught during his time in Fuling and members of which had sometimes been described in less than flattering terms in River Town, had set about translating the book from English to Chinese. However they seemed to be carefully guarding the translation, and it was not widely circulated. |
| It thus dawned to me that our guide had to have read the book in its English form and that many of the people of Fuling would be unaware of this book or know of its contents first hand (if at all). |
| The article notes the changes to Fuling, the most significant being psychological. The people of Fuling are now more open and connected with the rest of China and that is because of the Three Gorges Dam. Now time moves fast in Fuling: the owners of the noodle shop Hessler used to eat at, now own an Internet café. |
| Hessler acknowledges that lots of the detail about life in Fuling was obsolete before River Town went to press. And I guess that is the closest the article gets to apologising for any hurt feelings it might have caused. |
| This article is a great postscript to River Town and did come with some great pictures of Fuling and surrounding areas, and is therefore a great addition, if you can get your hands on hard a copy, to your Fuling "collection." |
| The thing I liked best about this article was a quote, which I have incorporated into my daughter's life book, from one of Hessler's former students about the first time she left Fuling. It really hit a chord as this was exactly what I was trying to do as our bus sped us from the orphanage to the motorway and back to Chongqing: |
| "Fuling slipped out of sight quickly. I stared out the window at the city and mountains, trying to grasp more into my memory. But who knows what will be when I come back next time?" |
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| Lisa, Steward, and their daughter Emily Fu De Shu Turner (Fu De Shu) |
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| "For a Fuling parent, the rich description of
daily life in Fuling and the surrounding countryside is worth its weight in gold" |
| "In a slightly embarrassed tone she responded that Fuling was not like that. Did She mean not anymore?" |
