Book Review - Country Driving (China)

Here is my Goodreads review of the third book in the amazing, interesting, personal, fascinating, informative, and thoughtful three book series on China by Peter Hessler.  My earlier reviews of the first two books are here and here.

Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip by Peter Hessler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This final installment in Peter Hessler's China trilogy is in itself a trilogy. Three books in one covering a seven year period after Peter got his Chinese driver's license. Getting a license in China is a process that is equal parts bureaucracy and and unintentional humor (imagine a driving test in the US that was based largely on the way people actually drive).

The first of the three books covers a 7,000 mile trip across northern China, chasing the outlines of the Great Wall. The Wall, like most near-legendary places and things turns out to be much more than the common pictures of a sturdy-looking stone and brick structure that we usually see in magazines. Not only can "it" not be seen from space but is actually not one wall but several different fortifications built out of many different materials including tamped earth in many spots, over a wide span of time.

The second book covers six years Hessler spent living in a small agricultural village north of Beijing, where he sees both the struggles and the adaptations necessary in rural China brought by the wrenching changes in recent decades. He also gets an inside look at the impact of national politics at the village level.

The final book covers several driving trips through the rapidly-urbanizing south of China, where he sees factories spring up where mountains used to be and watches those same factories move locations literally overnight to save a few dollars in costs, and sometimes disappear altogether. He also observes the emerging entrepreneurial class, where status and position are marked by the brand of cigarette smoked.

Throughout the book Hessler writes with the same personal, compassionate, observant viewpoint that marked his other books. From rushing a sick child to a hospital in Beijing and calling on doctor acquaintances in the US for help when the Chinese doctors don't seem up to the task, to sitting at a meal in a one-room hut with a family whose father and daughters all have taken up the urban factory semi-migrant lifestyle in the south, you sense Hessler's compassion and commitment to the real story in China -- the people.