Traveling Light

Travel book of the month: Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, by Peter Hessler

Peter Hessler proved himself an informed and empathetic observer of contemporary China with his 2001 expatriate memoir, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which chronicled his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sichuan Province.  A surprise bestseller, River Town stood out because of Hessler's ability to shed uncommon light on Chinese culture through the simple (yet somehow complicated) interactions he had with his students at a provincial teacher's college.

After his Peace Corps stint, Hessler began to report on China for publications such as The New Yorker and

National Geographic

, and now he has rolled nine accumulated years of China experience into a new book, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present. 

Hessler readily admits that China is a huge topic to tackle, and makes the apt observation that orthodox news journalism tends to focus on problems in the region — and hence miss the real story." I disliked the third-person voice," Hessler writes.  "[I]t was possible for two journalists to witness an event, interpret it completely differently, but adopt the same impersonal and authoritative tone.  Writers rarely appeared in their stories, and they didn't explain their reporting techniques."  Frustrated by his own attempts at standard, deadline-driven journalism, Hessler chooses to paint a cultural portrait of modern China (in all its contradictions) through happenstance friends and former students: "William Jefferson Foster," smart Sichuan country kid; Polat, a Uighur merchant who eventually immigrates to the United States; "Emily," a former student who takes a factory job in the manic, soulless boom town of Shenzen.

Central to the lives of these characters is the modernization of China (in the 1990s, Hessler reports, as many as 100 million Chinese moved from the interior countryside to booming industrial cities on the coast), and how this is affecting people's lives — and their relation to the past.  "New districts were constantly springing up throughout the capital," Hessler writes, "replacing old sections that were demolished one by one.... This is the yin to the bulldozer's yang: old cities like Beijing disappear, and courtyard homes... are torn down, but the construction opens up ancient tombs and underground cities at an unprecedented rate. China's economy develops the past even while destroying it."

Of all the ancient relics in China, Hessler focuses on oracle bones — the earliest known writing in East Asia — to give a context to examine the archaeology, language, architecture, and culture of China.  Chinese history, we discover, is remarkably old and pure — yet (remarkably) not as old or as pure as most Chinese like to think it is.

Avoiding the cross-cultural clichés and political generalizations that taint so much of what we typically read about East Asia, Oracle Bones is a remarkable feat of patient reportage and literary storytelling — and a must-read for anyone with an interest in contemporary China.

Intrigued by the prospect of living and traveling in such a huge and complex country, I emailed Peter Hessler a few questions on the eve of his book release.

Q&A with author Peter Hessler

China is a huge country,— bigger and more geographically diverse than the United States.  Amidst all the options, what is a good starting point for a first-time China traveler?

PH: Most people start in either Beijing or Shanghai, which makes sense.  Those cities are easier for non-Chinese speakers, and they have good offerings. But they aren't representative of the country, and it's important to try and see something different as well. I always encourage people to find a way to visit rural China, which is where most Chinese still live. Outside of Beijing, there are lots of small guesthouses in the countryside, in the villages near the Great Wall.  Or a traveler can visit Yangshou in the south, which has become a backpacker center.  It's heavily traveled but if you rent a bike and go into the countryside it's quite easy to escape the crowds.

Is there an under-traveled region of China that you might recommend for more adventurous independent travelers?

PH: I like the western regions: the scenery is stunning and it's uncrowded. Parts of Yunnan province are becoming quite heavily traveled, but there are still many areas that are relatively untouched.  And Tibet and Xinjiang are both amazing. 

One less-traveled area is Gansu province, especially in the north. Dunhuang is still under-traveled, in my opinion.  It's famous for the caves of Buddhist art, as well as the massive sand dunes and the desert scenery. It's a very relaxing place with a completely different feel from the east coast and big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.  It makes a good complement to urban China; after visiting Dunhuang, you get an appreciation for the size and range of the country.

What have you found to be the most difficult and challenging aspect of living and traveling in China?  Any tips on how travelers can ease the difficulties?

PH: The language is probably the hardest aspect. My first six months in Sichuan were quite difficult, largely because I had trouble communicating.  Once I began to pick up Chinese, things improved rapidly, and soon I realized how open and friendly most people are.  At this point, living in China is really quite easy.  To be honest, I'll probably struggle more in the States, where you have to worry about money and where life is more complicated.

But Mandarin is quite hard to learn, and it's a bad phrasebook language.  A book can't really tell you how to handle the tones, which means that you can't get around with a phrasebook like you can with Spanish or most other languages.  In '94, I traveled here for the first time, for more than a month, and I never really learned anything about the language. I had certain key phrases written down, in Chinese characters, and I was patient.  That's the key: you have to be patient and you can't expect everything to work efficiently.  Fortunately, the Chinese tend to be patient with foreigners, which helps a lot.  Also, it's basically a safe place to travel, so you can be more relaxed than in other parts of the world.

Culturally, China is vastly different from the United States.  What is the most common Chinese misperception about America and Americans? Conversely, what American clichés about China need to be reconsidered?

PH: The Chinese tend to view America in extreme ways.  Some Chinese speak of the US as if everybody there is rich and happy — I'd say this is probably the most common viewpoint among average Chinese.  But there is also a lot of talk about American poverty, violence, guns, as well as the bullying tendencies of the American government. This line of thought is often encouraged by the Chinese media.  When I taught in Sichuan, my students used a Chinese published textbook called Survey of America, which included one chapter about "Social Problems."  This is a sample paragraph:

"In 1981, in California University, robbery and rape increased one hundred and fifty percent.  In a Cathedral school of Washington District, a girl student was raped and robbed by a criminal with a hunting knife while she was studying alone in the classroom.  In a California university, a football coach was robbed on campus by someone with a gun.  It is said that, in South Carolina University, gangs of rascals have been taking girl students, women teachers and wives of teachers working in this university as their targets of rape, which has caused a great fear."

You can imagine how frustrating it is for an American teacher to be expected to use such a book to introduce the United States to a classroom of young Chinese.  I'm sure that these incidents are true — certainly, there are rascals in South Carolina —and I imagine that the details were culled from American newspaper stories.  But that doesn't make them a useful starting point for students in a small town on the Yangtze. They need context, not a bunch of scattered facts and trivia.  When I talk to Chinese about America, I often find myself trying to push them away from the extremes.  I don't want them to think of the U.S. as either paradise or hell.  They need to see it in human, everyday terms.

The American perception of China tends to be quite negative.  Our media generally focuses on human rights and political events, neither of which, in my opinion, is the appropriate lens through which to view China during this period. These are not fundamental issues for the average Chinese, whose interests should set the tone for any responsible coverage of the country. But foreign journalists tend to focus on extremes, just like the Chinese textbook.  The motivation is different, of course.  That textbook was government-produced propaganda, whereas independent American publications are trying to fulfill a more noble ambition — the great journalistic tradition of exposing problems and inequalities.  This plays a critical role in American communities, and it also serves a purpose in foreign countries that can't function on their own or require outside intervention. 

A correspondent who writes about a famine in Africa can save lives. But China is a very different place:  it's stable, functioning, independent, and increasingly powerful.  There's a limit to what Americans can do there, and more importantly, the U.S. doesn't need to do very much.  China has been steadily improving the lives of the vast majority of its citizens for twenty years, under its own governance.  When Americans look across the Pacific, the central question isn't how they can change China, but how they can understand the people who live there.  Again, context is the key.  Americans need a better sense of how the average Chinese lives and thinks.  I know that this is often frightening to Americans — the sense that they can't do much to help the Chinese.  Personally, I find this to be a relief.  Given how difficult it's proven to fix up relatively small countries like

Iraq and

Afghanistan, Americans should be grateful that they aren't responsible for the welfare of 1.3 billion Chinese.

In this sense, China is a unique place, and our media hasn't quite figured out how to respond.  There have always been standard ways of covering foreign countries, and foreign correspondents generally bounce from one place to another.  It might be time to rethink this strategy.  As we learn more about the outside world, we realize that different countries should be covered differently, and it makes sense to find specialists —people who speak the language and are willing to spend more time on the ground.

I want to emphasize that I'm not saying that everything in China is good, and my opinion isn't based on a desire to "help" China or show the country in a strictly positive light.  I'm an apolitical person; I see myself as an observer, not an activist.  I have no patience for either Chinese or American nationalism, and I believe that both countries have serious trouble understanding and interacting with the rest of the world.  My experiences as a teacher showed me how damaging it is to give people a warped view of a faraway place.  It disgusted me to see Americans depicted in extreme terms, and I react the same way to inaccurate portraits of Chinese. 

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, (HarperCollins, $26.95) debuts in bookstores this month.