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trembling blue stars This afternoon I started reading Peter Hessler's book River Town Two Years on the Yangtze and I love it. So much of what he says makes sense to me and I am very jealous of what he experienced. Where Theroux was cynical if not completely bitter about what he saw in his travels, Hessler comes to life being abroad. Maybe that is to be expected, because there is a big difference between a fifty year old man going through a divorce and a twenty six year old man living in a foreign country for the first time. Peter wants to know and understand the culture, where Paul just dissects what he encounters with as little emotion as possible. Paul longs to be either be away from everyone or be home. Peter wants to interact and see as much as he can while he is there. At the moment I'm only fifty pages or so into the book, so there may be some negative parts further along, but I don't think that that is going to happen. My biggest clue is that he now lives in Beijing. That may not be Fuling, where the book takes place, but clearly China means something special to him and that comes through in his writing. |