Keen On

Few Americans know contemporary China better than Peter Hessler. The author of four prize winning books about life in China as well as the former China correspondent of the New Yorker, Hessler originally came to China as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996 and has been writing about the day-to-day life of the country ever since. In contrast with the geopolitical crowd with their bellicose nonsense about the totalitarian evils of Xi’s China, Hessler, whose twin daughters were educated in a local state-run elementary school, has spent the last quarter century talking with ordinary Chinese people about ordinary things. In his latest book, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, Hessler offers intimate narrative about two generations of students in China’s heartland. In an America unthinkingly preoccupied with the “China threat”, Hessler provides an accurate window onto real life in this much misunderstood country. Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 200