Peter Hessler
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Articles by Peter Hessler
Why Doesn’t Anyone Want to Fix One of America’s Scariest Roads?
20 hours ago Happy Sunday! Temperatures this morning have fallen into the 40s, 50s and 60s yet again for a chilly yet seasonable start to the new week for some. Today's forecast details high level clouds streaming throughout the state with high temperatures reaching the 70s and 80s with maybe a few areas …
The Paperboy’s Secret
My first job in journalism—long before I knew that I wanted to write, and decades before I became a foreign correspondent—was delivering newspapers for the Columbia Missourian. I started at 5 A.M. on February 1, 1979, during one of those cold, snowy winters that used to be common in mid-Missouri.
China’s Shifting Relationship to the Countryside
Most of the way up the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, which rises to a height of more than eighteen thousand feet, in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province, there is a large alpine field called Yunshanping, or Spruce Meadow, where tourists gather to take photographs. Many of the visitors are couples about to get married. They wear traditional Western wedding clothing, the bride in white and the groom in black, and they are often accompanied by a team of several people.
John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction No. 3
Interviewed by Peter Hessler John McPhee, ca. 2009. Photograph courtesy of the Princeton University Office of Communications. John Angus McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1931, attended college in his hometown, and still lives there today. He tells stories when he drives through town; memories shadow him everywhere he goes. (“I grew up all over campus,” he says.
More than competition, Cimarron Athletic Field is about connections, community
GUEST COLUMN More than competition, Cimarron Athletic Field is about connections, community When it came to planning and building Ridgway’s brand-new Cimarron Athletic Field, my wife, Leslie T. Community celebrates opening of new $4 million athletic complex The runners pounded out miles on dirt trails, gravel roads and sidewalks ringing public parks. They launched themselves over hurdles in carpeted hallways of the school, sometimes crashing into the met...
The Uncertain Future of a Chinese Student at Harvard
Around midnight on April 16, 2025, after Chen Zimo learned that the Department of Homeland Security had threatened to revoke Harvard University’s certification to enroll international students, he began communicating with a trusted source about possible legal scenarios. Chen, a Chinese citizen, still needed a number of courses before he could complete his degree in computer science at Harvard, and he felt panicked about the possibility of having his visa revoked.
The Uncertain Future of a Chinese Student at Harvard
Daily coffee drinking linked to major health benefit in women as they age, study finds A popular morning beverage could do more than provide a perk. It could also help women stay healthy as they age. That’s according to new research from Harvard University, which followed a group of nearly 50,000 women from the Nurses' Health Study for a 30-year period. The researchers found that …
“Please Keep Caring.” What John McPhee Taught Generations of Writers and Journalists
In the spring of 1991, when I was a junior at Princeton, I took John McPhee’s seminar on nonfiction writing. Back then, I was an English major who hoped to become a novelist, and I focused primarily on writing short stories. I had no real interest in nonfiction. I hadn’t published a single word in any campus publication, and I had never considered a career in journalism.
Lauren Boebert’s Survival Instincts | The New Yorker
“The swamp, they thought I would fail!” Boebert shouted to more than two hundred supporters. “But you all welcomed me to Windsor, Colorado. And, rather than failing, I think it’s kind of like an A-plus with extra credit with this G.E.D. right here!” Two years earlier, Boebert had barely won the closest race in the nation, defending her seat in Colorado’s Third Congressional District by only five hundred and forty-six votes.
Lauren Boebert’s Survival Instincts
“The swamp, they thought I would fail!” Boebert shouted to more than two hundred supporters. “But you all welcomed me to Windsor, Colorado. And, rather than failing, I think it’s kind of like an A-plus with extra credit with this G.E.D. right here!” Two years earlier, Boebert had barely won the closest race in the nation, defending her seat in Colorado’s Third Congressional District by only five hundred and forty-six votes.
China Books Review
This is an episode of the China Books Podcast, from China Books Review. Subscribe at your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, where a new episode lands early each month. Or listen right here, where you can also watch the video and browse our archive of past episodes.
Editor’s Picks: “Bold Strokes,” by Jane Boon
Bold Strokes by Jane Boon Erika Grieg has a secret: a famed gallery owner in Chelsea by day, at night she is a first-class dominatrix who operates out of a dungeon in the basement. She also is whip-smart (sorry, but who could resist?) and tartly funny as she recounts how she got her start in S&M while at Harvard, and, well, let’s just say the worlds of art, painters, and wealthy bankers intersect in provocative and ultimately deadly ways.
A view of life for students in China across generations
We often hear about China in the news in big, broad, geopolitical terms like international trade. We rarely hear about life for students and families in China. Author Peter Hessler was a teacher in China in the 1990s. He returned about 20 years later to teach again and enroll his own twin daughters in public school there. And he found profound changes. In just one generation, his students went from more rural to more urban; they were more educated; they grew more wealthy and even grew much taller.
Daniel A Bell - Calculus, Covid & Communism
Let me begin with a banal observation: China is a large and complex country with good and bad aspects. Yet somehow it seems difficult to convey this message in view of the steady drumbeat of negative news about the country in Anglophone media outlets. A few years ago, a leading American journalist with extensive experience in China suggested an effective way to engage with the Anglophone reading public.
Sideline Sinology
For a writer, it’s never a good sign when somebody contacts your agent about a used car. My agent’s name is William Clark, and he’s represented me since 1999, when he took a chance on an unsolicited manuscript of River Town that showed up in his slush pile. Back then, I was just starting out, and even the most mundane communication from William—some paperwork, or a question about schedule—made me excited to think that I had embarked on a new life.
ChinaFile Presents: Peter Hessler’s ‘Other Rivers: A Chinese Education’
On July 17, ChinaFile hosted the launch of Peter Hessler’s Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, a memoir of his two years teaching at Sichuan University in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021. The book explores elementary and college education, China’s handling of the outbreak of COVID-19, the lives of a previous generation of Hessler’s students, and U.S.-China relations, among may other topics.
Inside COVID’s Ground Zero: Wuhan, China Before and After Mass Catastrophe
Peter Hessler Remembers the Pandemic In the Place Where It All Began On my second visit to the site of the former Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, at the intersection of Development Road and New China Road, in central Wuhan, I wore a mask and a pair of sunglasses with a loose frame. It was the last week of August, and three security guards sat sweating in black uniforms at the entrance to the market. They examined my passport and checked my temperature: 36.6 degrees.
A Snob’s Guide to Summer in the Berkshires
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been going up to the Berkshires with my family. The region, located in western Massachusetts, is gorgeous year-round, but it particularly shines in the warmer months. Summer in the Berkshires is near and dear to my heart: It’s where my sister and I went to sleepaway camp, where my husband and I got engaged, and where I’ve spent countless nights sitting with my grandparents on their patio, taking in the sunset over the lake and talking about nothing and everything.
Men in White: The Gutsy, Against-All-Odds Return of Penn State Football
Chris Raymond. St. Martin’s, $32 (496p) ISBN 978-1-250-28048-0 This rousing debut oral history from sports reporter Raymond traces how the Penn State Nittany Lions rebounded following former coach Jerry Sandusky’s 2011 arrest for child sex abuse.
I Don’t Want to Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony
Nick Corasaniti. Harper, $32 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-295078-9 New York Times reporter Corasaniti debuts with an immersive chronicle of the music venue in Asbury Park, N.J., where Bruce Springsteen got his start. Beginning the account with the Stone Pony’s 1974 opening, Corasaniti pulls from hundreds of interviews with a diverse cast of characters, among them the bar’s original owner, Jack Roig; manager Butch Pielka; and Springsteen himself.
Make It Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner
CeCé Telfer. Grand Central, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-1-5387-5624-9 In this stirring debut memoir, Telfer recounts the challenges she has faced throughout her career as a trans athlete. Growing up in Jamaica, Telfer was bullied for the feminine “way I walk and talk” but discovered that her athleticism earned the begrudging respect of her classmates.
A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook
Emma Hayes, with Michael Calvin. PublicAffairs, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5417-0535-7 In this strong debut, Hayes, who recently became head coach of the U.S. women’s national soccer team after managing the Chelsea FC women’s team for more than a decade, outlines her leadership philosophy while sharing glimpses into the world of elite soccer.
Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World
Casey Michel. St. Martin’s, $30 (368p) ISBN 978-1-250-28605-5 Corruption on behalf of despots is the stock in trade of American lobbyists who work for foreign governments, according to this masterful exposé. Michel (American Kleptocracy), director of the Combatting Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, surveys many such lobbyists, with a focus on two egregious examples.
Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola
Susan Greenhalgh. Univ. of Chicago, $25 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-226-83473-3 In this troubling exposé, Greenhalgh (Fat-Talk Nation), an anthropology professor emerita at Harvard University, reveals how Coca-Cola waged a pseudoscience campaign throughout the aughts to deflect public concern that their high-fat, high-sugar drinks were fueling an obesity epidemic.
What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to the West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service
Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. Dutton, $35 (608p) ISBN 978-0-593-18454-7 Actors Fitzgerald and McCormack—who played Carol Fitzpatrick and Kate Harper, respectively, on The West Wing (1999–2006)—deliver an entertaining history of the show grounded in extensive interviews with its stars, writers, and crew.
Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication
Arik Kershenbaum. Penguin Press, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-0-593-65493-4 In this rewarding study, Cambridge University zoologist Kershenbaum (The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy) examines the meaning behind howls, screeches, and other calls of the wild. He explains that wolf howls can be heard over 10 kilometers away and help pack members keep in touch with one another while alerting outsiders that they’re in another pack’s territory.
Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About Breasts
Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About Breasts In this fun and far-ranging account, sociologist Thornton (Seven Days in the Art World) explores the topic of women’s breasts from a female perspective—tying in multiple aesthetic, professional, and spiritual threads of analysis while eschewing the “male gaze.” Relating her own anecdotes on breastfeeding in the 1990s—when it still had a strongly taboo feeling, especially in public—and...
Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich Off America’s Poor
Anne Kim. New Press, $28.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-62097-781-1 Corporations are taking advantage of sclerotic government to skim money off anti-poverty initiatives, according to this stinging exposé. Lawyer and journalist Kim (Abandoned) probes a raft of ill-designed and poorly supervised federal and state programs that are run or mediated by private businesses that jack up prices and deliver substandard services.
How Chinese Students Experience America
In my composition class at Sichuan University, in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, the first assignment was a personal essay. I gave some prompts in case students had trouble coming up with topics. One suggestion was to describe an incident in which the writer had felt excluded from a group. Another was to tell how he or she had responded when some endeavor went unexpectedly wrong.
Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation
Tom McGrath. Grand Central, $32 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5387-2599-3 Vaulting ambition, passionate consumerism, and a business culture that threw workers under the bus are among the achievements of the yuppie generation, according to this penetrating study. Journalist McGrath (MTV) charts the trajectory of the “young urban professional” cohort who protested in the 1960s, “found themselves” in the ’70s, and went to Wall Street in the ’80s.
Tahrir Square Turns Against Morsi
On the edge of Tahrir Square, I met a twelve-year-old boy named Hassan Mohamed Abdel Hafiz who showed me an empty tear gas canister and a birdshot scar on his stomach. Scavenged canisters are a badge of honor for those who fight for the people who fight on the front lines of Egyptian protests; Hassan said he had acquired his after a battle with the police in front of the Lycée la Liberté, a block away from the square.
Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
Journalist Luthra debuts with an eye-opening and chilling look at the strain the U.S. reproductive healthcare system is undergoing in a “post-Roe” world. Tracking the circuitous, costly, and legally jeopardizing paths that patients seeking abortions who live in states that have imposed restrictions must take to access care across state lines, Luthra reveals that these cross-country journeys are having a “bottleneck” effect that is limiting healthcare access across America.
Country Driving: A Road Trip through Modern China
Chapter 4 Country Driving Author Peter Hessler is an American author and journalist known for his books on China. He was born on June 14, 1969, in Columbia, Missouri, USA. Hessler released the book “Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip” in 2010. It is the third non-fiction book he published about China after “River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze” (2001) and “Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China” (2006).
Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics
Ernesto Londoño. Celadon, $29.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-250-87854-0 New York Times correspondent Londoño debuts with an arresting survey of the “medicinal psychedelic field” and where it’s headed.
The Double Education of My Twins’ Chinese School
Published in the July 3, 2023 Issue Regarding today’s weather, is it fine to wear shorts? It took less than a minute for the next beep. This time, the writer was Number 35 Li Jialing’s Mama: We are wearing shorts, it’s not cold. Each message appeared in the standard WeChat format: a time stamp, the sender’s name, an avatar, and the text within a bubble.
外面的世界 | www.wenxuecity.com
上周去三藩开会，闲暇之余和同事沿着起伏的山势步行到著名的九曲花街（Lombard Street）。艳阳当头，极陡的街道，又是刚吃完一家“重庆小面”的小饭馆，竟有一点回家的感觉。到了这条美丽的羊肠小街面前突然想起，第一次看到这条街是年幼的时候在“正大综艺”节目里。那位可爱的导游主持人小姐说着跟大陆不一样的普通话带着我们一次一次看到许多当时国人想都不能想像的地方——每次节目到关键处就挺住让大家猜猜看，然后在广告之后才揭晓答案。这街阳光美丽的样子就跟今天一模一样。...
China, China's Boomtowns - National Geographic Magazine
At 2:30 in the afternoon, the bosses began designing the factory. The three-story building they had rented was perfectly empty: white walls, bare floors, a front door without a lock. You could come or go; everything in the Lishui Economic Development Zone shared that openness. Neighboring buildings were also empty shells, and they flanked a dirt road that pointed toward an unfinished highway. Blank silver billboards reflected the sky, advertising nothing but late October sunlight.
Recommendations from the Out West Books team for your next great read
| January 22, 2023 | World Cuisine | As part of SunLit – The Sun’s literary division – we offer staff recommendations from bookstores across Colorado every week. This week, the staff at Out West Books in Grand Junction are proposing four Chinese-inspired volumes to welcome the Lunar New Year.
What Chinese People Think of Their Government’s “Zero COVID” Policy
Of forty respondents, none had been infected. Nobody had had a case in his or her household, and there were also no infections among close relatives—parents, spouses, children, or siblings. Only six personally knew anybody who had tested positive for COVID. For three of these respondents, the cases occurred among distant relatives, whereas the other three had work colleagues or friends who had been infected. One of the colleague cases, though, was uncertain.
Excerpts
The “voluntary” insurance at the entrance had cost just two yuan, about thirty-five cents, but I had been fleeced all the way from Beijing and somehow this was the final straw. Why did everything have to be so crass and commercialized? I whined to...
A Teacher in China Learns the Limits of Free Expression
Other problems can involve class materials. In the fall of 2019, I started teaching at Sichuan University, in southwestern China, where I met a law-school teacher from another institution who had developed a syllabus with some sensitive content. The course included “Disturbing the Peace,” an Ai Weiwei documentary about the artist’s encounters with the Chinese judicial system.
China’s Reform Generation Adapts to Life in the Middle Class
Even when they participated in city activities, their rural roots were often visible. In June of 2021, Linda and Huang Dong’s son took the gaokao, the multiday national college-entrance exam. On the first morning, I met the family at the entrance to the testing site in Fuling. In Chinese cities, it’s become a tradition for exam-day mothers to dress up in fancy qipao outfits, and Linda dutifully wore red silk, with her long hair neatly braided.
The Best Books On China By Western Journalists
Who am I? For nearly 40 years I have worked at the Wall Street Journal, largely focusing on international economics. I was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Asian and Russian financial crisis. China has been a particular passion. In 1999, I covered the U.S. negotiations with China over its entry to the World Trade Organization, which included side trips to New Zealand and elsewhere for some of the talks.
Peter Hessler | The New Yorker
A Reporter at Large Learning to Ski in a Country of Beginners As China prepares to host the Winter Olympics, its people get on skis. June 14, 2021 A Reporter at Large The Rise of Made-in-China Diplomacy While political leaders trade threats, the pandemic has made Americans even more reliant on China’s manufacturers.
Learning to Ski in a Country of Beginners
For select Chinese skiers and snowboarders, there are WeChat groups whose names include the phrase Gan Dengyan: “Look on in Despair.” Despair is not open to everybody. In order to join, applicants submit their name, place of residence, and proper documentation in the form of an X-ray or other medical report. Despite the strict rules, a handful of interlopers have successfully penetrated Despair and returned with screenshots.
The Rise of Made-in-China Diplomacy
The Rise of Made-in-China Diplomacy While political leaders trade threats, the pandemic has made Americans even more reliant on China’s manufacturers. Read Full Article »
The Rise of Made-in-China Diplomacy
One word that almost never appears in Amazonglish is “China.” Marketplace Pulse, which analyzes e-commerce, has said that nearly half of Amazon’s top sellers—those with more than a million dollars in annual sales in the U.S.—are in China. An Amazon spokesperson recently described this as inaccurate, although he declined to disclose the number of Chinese sellers, saying only that the majority of third-party venders on the U.S. site are based in America.
Books that made the Coronavirus year -Part IV!
Way back in July (six months ago!), Reuters did an explainer on why the passage of time felt so weird during the lockdown (it’s a great test — you should try it out). Weeks passed in a blur, and October came after March, yet the days were so long. What did we do in April, and where did August go? Thankfully, the one thing that felt normal was to read, albeit much of it was related to my own upcoming book on Nepal’s history with China (Amazon/Context, 2021).
The Showdown
On July 1st, after the Egyptian military issued its ultimatum, and crowds of celebrating people began to stream into Tahrir Square, I walked down the street to the headquarters of Tamarrod, a political-activist group. A neat line of Apache helicopters flew overhead, trailing Egyptian flags.
9 Days in Wuhan, Ground Zero of the Coronavirus
9 Days in Wuhan, Ground Zero of the Coronavirus
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