Archive - September 19, 2024

  Peter Hessler’s new book blends the personal and political in a perceptive exploration of schooling and generational shifts. by contributing editor Crawford Kilian who taught English in China in 1983     A former international correspondent and current staff writer for the New Yorker, Peter Hessler has written an extraordinary new book that is both brilliant reportage and an architectural feat of narrative. Other Rivers: A Chinese Education examines the current experiences of what Hessler calls China’s “generation Xi” university students. They are the cohort that came of age during the presidency of Xi Jinping, also the general secretary of the Communist Party of China. He contrasts them with the “reform generation” of the 1990s, a group that Hessler came to know well as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer during his first years in China. His book brings together a vivid personal account of education in China with perceptive political . . .