This story appeared in the Columbia Tribune on March 7, 2010. Yajing Yu participated in the winter AAC English and Professional Immersion Program.
WHEN EAST MEETS WEST
A Chinese intern reporter talks to author Peter Hessler about his travels through her country.
By YAJING YU Special to the Tribune
Sunday, March 7, 2010
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Chinese university student Yajing Yu, or “Janey,” spent about two weeks in an internship with the Tribune. During that time, she wrote several stories for the newspaper, including this interview, conducted in Chinese over the telephone, with Columbia native Peter Hessler, the author of “Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory.” Hessler was scheduled to speak last Sunday in Columbia but canceled the visit. No new visit has been set, his publicist said.
“From outside I heard the rhythms of machinery —
the rattle of glassmaking, the rumble of plastic molds, the whir of wrapping wire. But there wasn’t a single human sound, and for half an hour I stood alone, reading the walls of the empty factory.”
- Peter Hessler
Connection to the University of Missouri: Janey visited Columbia for six weeks as part of MU’s English and Professional Immersion program. It is designed for university students from Pacific Rim countries with English skills, high academic standing and a desire to experience American life.
Background: Hessler is a Columbia native and graduated in 1988 from Hickman High School. While at Hickman he became interested in literature and writing. He then went on to study English and creative writing at Princeton University, where, during his junior year, he took John McPhee’s renowned writing seminar. Hessler graduated in 1992 and won a Rhodes Scholarship to study English language and literature at the University of Oxford. In 1996, he joined the Peace Corps and spent the next two years teaching English at a local college in Fuling, China. currently lives in Colorado with his wife, journalist and writer Leslie T. Chang.
A student’s eyes are opened
As a Chinese, visiting as a student, I came to America with a big curiosity. During the six weeks I was in Columbia, I experienced a lot. I learned about the splendid American culture, made friends with friendly American people, tried the real American food that is a little different from the American food in China, and had a look at the Mississippi River. All such things are new and unfamiliar to me. Fortunately, I also had an opportunity to interview Peter Hessler. He let me see a different China through a foreigner’s eyes. A few moments when I began talking to him in my native language, I asked myself, Am I a real Chinese? He knows about China more than me. And he speaks Chinese like a native speaker. Through his book and my interview with him, I saw a lively China. His book led me to visit — in my mind — many places where I had never been before as I became to know more about the Chinese countryside, Chinese farmers, Chinese highways, even Chinese factories through a foreigner’s eyes.
- Yajing Yu
Have you ever had an experience like this? Standing on a wide landscape during a journey, listening to the rhythms of machinery or the sound of wind? Maybe you have in this country, but probably not in China. However, that was the experience for Peter Hessler, the author of “Country Driving: A journey Through China from Farm to Factory,” published this year by Harper.
The Columbia native and Hickman High School grad has built a distinguished career. The Wall Street Journal calls him “one of the Western world’s most thoughtful writers on modern China”; and his publisher, HarperCollins, describes Hessler as a writer “who deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world.”
After the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker acquired his Chinese driver’s license in 2001, he traveled the country, tracking how cars and improved roads were transforming China.
The book, according to HarperCollins, writes movingly about the average people — farmers, migrant workers, entrepreneurs — who have reshaped the nation during one of the most critical periods in its history. It is about Hessler’s 7,000-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau.
He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, according to the book, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next, Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which dramatically changes after the local road is paved and the capital’s auto boom brings new tourism.
Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center, his publisher explained.
On his travels through China, he frequently encountered Chinese who have never met a foreigner, much less an American. About that, he said many Chinese farmers “were very friendly and invited him to their house, to drink tea and chat.” Regarding Americans, Hessler said the average Chinese “think all the American are very rich, and they all have guns.”
“They know only a few things about America,” he explained.
Hessler said, however, that it was not his job, while living and reporting in China, to represent an entire culture.
“I never think that I’m an ambassador for America,” he said. “I am only a writer. I don’t care about politics; I just want to write a good story. When I traveled in China, I found that most of the Chinese aren’t interested in politics. They are different from Americans. Chinese pay more attention to their life.”
Being on the road opened Hessler up not only the highways and byways, but also the lives of the Chinese.
“It is a little bit noisy, and people pass by if you are traveling by train or by walking, and the communication of face to face would be less,” he said. “But by driving, I made friends with many strangers who were very kind. Sometimes, they asked me for a ride, we had a short route together. They told me their stories about China or about their life. It made me learn a lot, and I enjoyed it,” he said.
