China – Peace Corps Worldwide

Part 2–In That Time of Their Lives — Jeremiah Norris (Colombia)

Sep 21 2024

RPCVs in the news — by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) Peter Hessler And, now let us present the man who brought China Home to America, Peter Hessler. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in China, 1996-98, teaching English at a Teacher’s College. Afterwards, Peter continued his work in China as a freelance writer for publications such as: The Wall Street Journal; The Boston Globe; The South China Morning Post; and National Geographic. He joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2000 and served as a foreign correspondent until 2007. Based on his experience as a Volunteer in teaching English, Peter has written four books on China: 1) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze; 2) Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China; 3) Country Driving: A Journey from Farm to Factory, which is a record of Peter’s stories when driving a renter car from rural northern . . .

OTHER RIVERS, a Remarkable Panorama of Change in China

Sep 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 . . .

New books by Peace Corps writers | July through August, 2024

Sep 03 2024

New books — To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers to order a book and maybe VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT. See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a free copy along with a few instructions. PLEASE, PLEASE join in our Third Goal effort and volunteer to review a book or books!!! Songs of Mali by Ruth Gooley (Mali 1980-81) Peace Corps Writers May 2024 102 pages $15.00 (paperback) Songs of Mali . . .

OTHER RIVERS by Peter Hessler (China)

Aug 26 2024

Review — Other Rivers – spotlight on Generation Xi An American’s view of life in China during the tumultuous Covid years Reviewed by Amy Hawkins The Guardian 21 Aug 2024 When Peter Hessler (China 1996-98), the celebrated chronicler of Chinese society, arrived at Sichuan University in the autumn of 2019, he was expecting to take a break from writing. Hessler made his name as a journalist documenting the lives of everyday people during China’s boom years in the early 2000s. But he first got to know the country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Sichuan in the mid-1990s – an experience that formed the basis of his first book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, a bestseller that introduced a generation of readers to a rapidly changing China. Nearly a quarter of a century on, he had planned to focus his energies on teaching. But events were about . . .

OTHER RIVERS by Peter Hessler (China)

Aug 02 2024

A new book — Other Rivers: A Chinese Education By Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Penguin Books July 2024 461 pages $16.99 (Kindle); $19.69 (AudioBook); $25.94 (Hardback) An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter century More than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China’s economic boom, an experience chronicled in his book River Town, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan Province to instruct students from the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners. Over the years, Hessler had kept in close contact with many of the people he had taught in the 1990s. By reconnecting with these individuals — members of China’s “Reform generation,” now in their . . .

Rob Schmitz (China) is NPR’s International Correspondent

May 18 2024

In the news NPR newsletter Rob Schmitz (China 1996-98) is NPR’s international correspondent based in Berlin, where he covers the human stories of a vast region reckoning with its past while it tries to guide the world toward a brighter future. From his base in the heart of Europe, Schmitz has covered Germany’s levelheaded management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of right-wing nationalist politics in Poland and creeping Chinese government influence inside the Czech Republic. Prior to covering Europe, Schmitz provided award-winning coverage of China for a decade, reporting on the country’s economic rise and increasing global influence. His reporting on China’s impact beyond its borders took him to countries such as Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. Inside China, he’s interviewed elderly revolutionaries, young rappers, and live-streaming celebrity farmers who make up the diverse tapestry of one of the most fascinating countries on the planet. . . .

“Writers from the Peace Corps” by John Coyne (Ethiopia)

May 09 2024

John writes — Since 1961, Peace Corps writers have used their volunteer service as source material for their fiction and nonfiction. Approximately 250,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps. Of these volunteers and staff, more than 1,500 have published memoirs, novels, and poetry inspired by their experience. Many former volunteers have gone on to careers as creative writing teachers, journalists, and editors, while others have discovered a variety of jobs outside of publishing where their Peace Corps years have contributed to successful employment. A Peace Corps tour has proven to be a valuable experience — in terms of one’s craft and one’s professional career—for more than one college graduate. The first to write The first book to draw on the Peace Corps experience was written by Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana 1961–63), who had volunteered for the Peace Corps in 1961 after having been an Associated Press reporter. That book, . . .

Peter Hessler Sells His Car in China

Mar 03 2024

CENSORED ESSAY: PETER HESSLER SELLS HIS CAR Posted by Alexander Boyd | Feb 29, 2024 Acclaimed writer Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) is selling his car in Chengdu, after leaving China in 2021 when his teaching contract was abruptly terminated. Online, the sale of his Honda CRV has spurred a series of reflections on Hessler’s impact on China and on the closing of a chapter in U.S.-China relations. Hessler wrote three famous books on China: River Town, on his Peace Corps service in rural Chongqing; Oracle Bones, a portrait of China past and present with the recurring eponymous motif of China’s oldest recorded writing system; and “Country Driving,” a travelogue detailing his journeys across China. (A fourth, Other Rivers, is on the way.) Some of the reflections on Hessler have proven politically sensitive. In an essay that was later censored, the writer Zhang Feng took to WeChat to lament Hessler’s departure as a . . .

SOCRATES IN SICHUAN by Peter Vernezze (China)

Oct 15 2023

Socrates in Sichuan: Chinese Students Search for Truth, Justice, and the (Chinese) Way Peter J. Vernezze (China 2006-08) Potomac Books April 2011 212 pages $10.01 (Kindle); $9.49 (Hardback) When Peter J. Vernezze took a leave of absence from his position as a philosophy professor to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in China, he supplemented his main task―teaching English―with leading a weekly philosophical discussion group with Chinese undergraduate and graduate students at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. In each session the students debated topics as diverse as the status of truth, the meaning of life, the reality of fate, the definition of sanity, the necessity of religion, and the value of romantic love. Each of the twenty-five chapters of Socrates in Sichuan focuses on the topic of one evening’s discussion, which was always in the form of a question: How are ancient conceptions of virtue holding up in . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction

Jul 12 2023

Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet by Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) The incredible story of Benjamin Franklin’s parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia — a deathbed wager that captures the Founder’s American Dream and his lessons for our current, conflicted age. Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. In Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, Michael Meyer traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and . . .

Peter Hessler (China) — “How China Controlled the Coronavirus”

Aug 10 2020

The New Yorker 10 Aug 2020 A few days before my return to classroom teaching at Sichuan University, I was biking across a deserted stretch of campus when I encountered a robot. The blocky machine stood about chest-high, on four wheels, not quite as long as a golf cart. In front was a T-shaped device that appeared to be some kind of sensor. The robot rolled past me, its electric motor humming. I turned around and tailed the thing at a distance of fifteen feet. It was May 27th, and it had been more than three months since my last visit to the university’s Jiang’an campus, which is on the outskirts of Chengdu, in southwestern China. In late February, when the spring semester was about to begin, I had hurried to campus to retrieve some materials from my office. We were nearly a month into a nationwide lockdown in response . . .

Trump’s move against China for its Uighur oppression makes him look like a hypocrite

Jun 28 2020

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994–96) A high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained in China’s Xinjiang region. June 20, 2020, By Sébastien Roblin (China 2013-15) Even when President Donald Trump finally manages to do the right thing, it’s rarely for the right reasons. Such was the case Wednesday, when he signed a law that allows for sanctioning as human rights violators Chinese officials responsible for running camps imprisoning up to 1 million Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang Province of western China. Trump’s been so inconsistent on what should be a core tenet of American foreign policy — opposition to large-scale internment of a minority population — that there’s some truth to claims from Beijing that Trump’s move this week was a hypocritical one motivated by a desire to weaponize the issue against China amid high-stakes trade negotiations. He . . .

“A Train Took Me 5,000 Miles from Moscow to China—and to a Whole New Life” — Peter Hessler (China)

Jun 24 2020

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Saum (Ukraine 1994-96) An epic journey by rail answers the question: Where am I going? Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Businessweek, June 24, 2020 A moment on the Trans-Siberian railway line. Photographer: Oleg Klimov/Panos Pictures/ReduxWhen I was 25, I boarded a train, rode it to the last stop, and disembarked with a new sense of what to do with my life. This kind of thing can happen when you’re 25. It also helps if the journey lasts six days and 5,000 miles. The year was 1994, and I was traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had bought a one-way ticket from Moscow to Beijing. After passing through the western part of Siberia, the train would head south across Mongolia. Back then, the world seemed bigger: no cellphones, no online reservations. Things were heavier, too. In my backpack—Lowe Alpine, internal frame—I carried a tent, . . .

Review — FAST TRAIN HOME by Gus Karlson (China)

Mar 17 2020

Fast Train Home By Gus Karlson (China) Self-published 164 pages January 2020 $12.99 (paperback), $8.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Sue Hoyt Aiken (Ethiopia 1962-64) • This book is a collection of tales as told through the eyes of the PCV both as narrator and participant in the adventures. The adventures span a two year period involving Peace Corps Volunteers living and teaching in China. Stories form a basis of a conversation even as volunteers arrived in China. As they grew into their teaching assignments they were able to share startling urban scenes that sharply contrasted to their descriptions of high mountain breathtaking, sometimes adverse and risky, stunning tales! The main character is China brought to light by the author and its buddies through their sometimes humorous in the moment observations and thoughts. This might be just after climbing at a fast clip up a tortuous twisty path or pushing . . .

Peace Corps To End China Program–Heard on All Things Considered

Jan 25 2020

Thans for the ‘heads up’ from Chris Honode’ (Colombia 1967-69) Peace Corps To End China Program January 24, 2020, 4:19 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered . . . RPCV ROB SCHMITZ The Peace Corps has decided to ax its China program starting this summer. Critics of the decision call the program one of the diplomatic success stories in the history of China-U.S. relations. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Starting this summer, there will no longer be Peace Corps volunteers working in China. Years ago, NPR’s own Rob Schmitz was a Peace Corps volunteer based in southwest China. He joins us now to explain why the Peace Corps decided to end its China program and what the impact of that might be. And, Rob, for this conversation, I’m going to ask you to put on a slightly different hat than your typical NPR correspondent. I want you to speak to your . . .