Other Rivers

More than twenty years after teaching English to China’s first boom generation at a small college in Sichuan Province, Peter Hessler returned to teach the next generation. At the same time, Hessler’s twin daughters became the only Westerners in a student body of about two thousand in their local primary school. Through reconnecting with his previous students now in their forties – members of China’s ‘Reform generation’ – and teaching his current undergraduates, Hessler is able to tell an intimately unique story about China’s incredible transformation over the past quarter-century.