The picture above depicts how vehicular traffic is regulated on the road heading into China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region: plastic “dummy” cops standing sentinel adorning the soft-shoulder, meant to resemble the genuine article to deter traffic violators, wanton drunken driving, and reckless acts behind the wheel across the wide, flat expanses of the barren steppes of the wind-battered Mongolian plain.

Well, yesterday afternoon I finished off native-Missourian Peter Hessler’s third installment in his “angels abroad” China series, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory (affiliate link), and I’m giving the book a very tall two thumbs up. This is 424pp of lean and mean non-fiction prosaic gold which you’re going to regret not reading. Did I mention you should go out and snag a copy today?

In what’s become this long-time Beijing-based New Yorker and National Geographic A-list journalist’s signature style: fluid narrative non-fiction lines coupled with deep first-hand knowledge of his subject material who recounts deeply engaging off-the-beaten track tales about the Chinese citizens he encounters along his journey, Hessler slowly casts his Country Driving spell and keeps us there, entranced and in a perpetual buzz-like state.

This was yet another tour-de-force piece of travel writing in the mold of Hessler’s River Town: Two Years On the Yangtze or Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (affiliate link), written by Hessler’s partner Leslie Chang, also a former Prague expat, I might add.

The book roughly tracks Hessler’s meanderings about the PRC’s back country atop his trusty steed, a rickety Capital Motors-rented SUV, beginning circa 2000 and ending around 2005-6.

Tracking as far west as the outer reaches of the Tibetan plateau in remote Western Gansu province, about as far as the authorities will permit a registered foreign journalist to travel (Hessler gets “arrested” several times during his journeys), ending in the bustling development towns of Zheijiang province, Hessler beams his writerly laser at the trials and tribulations of the people he encounters along his journey.

Armed with little more than his notepad and a trunk-ful of Chinese Oreo cookies, Cokes, Gatorades, bottled water, a tent, a backback, and dozens of Dove chocolate bars, Hessler frequently stops alongside the highway’s shoulder to pick up fellow travelers. He shares with us their amazement to discover a fluent-Chinese speaking foreigner at the wheel who is up to nothing more than trekking in their neck of the woods.

Skirting the Great Wall into Gansu Province:

The first leg of his journey traces the contours of the Great Wall. Hessler writes how the original objective was to trace it as far west as he could, along its more ruined sections which today stand little more than a couple of feet tall, no higher than a man’s shoulder. It’s here when he gets his first bitter taste of PRC law enforcement medicine when he’s unexpectedly beset by local enforcers who warn him that he’s traveling in forbidden territory – this being so close to the Tibetan border and all the associated problems with that particular situation. After a grueling day behind the wheel, cops storm his hotel and rouse him from his bed following an hour of fitful sleep demanding that he must leave the city immediately. Escorted to his jeep all the way to the town’s limits, his arrival in nearby cities is heralded in advance from where he just left and like a hounded wartime refugee who can find no succor in any country, Hessler’s forbidden from staying the night anywhere. He decides to pitch his tent in the middle of nowhere armed with nothing except his Sinomap road atlas and a trusty compass and when he opts on the spot to abandon his Great Wall Mission for the rest of the year, postponing the meticulously planned journey for six months until the heat dies down.

Sancha Village:

Hessler introduces us to the northern village of Sancha, a pastoral town situated just a couple hours north of the capital, Beijing, where he and fellow creative, the photographer Mimi Kuo-Deemer, rent a house from the locals over the course of several months. They intend on using it as a sort of artist’s colony, but just then fate intervenes. It’s when we learn about their unexpected friendship with the villagers Wei Ziqi, a second man who only becomes known to us as the “Shitkicker,” in addition to the village’s female Party Secretary and a young boy named Wei Jia (pictured above with his father Ziqi) suffering from a potentially-fatal child condition that suddenly absorbs Hessler and Kuo-Deemer in ways they never quite expected.

That’s Hessler pictured with the boy Jia.

Hessler suddenly finds himself on urgent trans-Pacific phone calls back to the States and pulling all sorts of local guanxi with medical friends and colleagues down in Beijing in a frantic attempt to get answers about the boy’s rapidly deteriorating health. There are even several hairy altercations with intractable medical staff at Beijing’s Childrens’ Hospital which you’ll admire Hessler for, even if you haven’t by now fallen for the man’s prose in the narrative.

Boldly Into Inner Mongolia:

Hessler’s snap decision to postpone the Great Wall leg of his journey for about half a year until things cool with the Chinese fuzz thurst him into the flat expanses of windswept Inner Mongolia, where he travels along with fellow Peace Corps alum, the bruiser Mike Goettig. They get up into some complex hassles here as well, but I won’t steal the thunder for you. You’ll have to purchase the book for yourself. But believe me when I tell that what happens to them is so typically Chinese!

It’s in Inner Mongolia where Hessler conversations with the locals take an extraordinary turn. The region is one which young Chinese are abandoning in droves for the relative affluence and bright-lights big-city marvels of China’s blossoming development towns. Inner Mongolia’s comparative poverty and desolation are stark. Rather than invest in the region’s upkeep, Beijing has instead invested heavily in infrastructure projects (egs. roads, airports, and train facilities) rather than directly into the education of these hapless masses. Hessler tells us there are scores of illiterate people living in Inner Mongolia. The denizens of this region are the once-proud descendants of Genghis Khan himself, now decimated into vassal peoples divided between the Chinese part of the steppe and the much-larger — and sovereign — Mongolian Republic on the other side of the border. Just as a drunken ethnic Mongolian tour guide at the Genghis Khan Museum reveals to Hessler in Mandarin Chinese, “we were once a proud race which dominated half the known world over just twenty-five short years. Now we’re nothing…so we deal by drinking ourselves mad.”

This is the tragic tale of many indigenous groups on the planet.

The Boom Towns of Entrepreneurial Zheijiang and the “Jews of the East”:

We’re now into 2004. Hessler becomes a regular commuter between Beijing and the former treaty port city of Wenzhou, touted as “the most entrepreneurial city in all of China” and the birthplace of the PRC’s private economy. Wenzhou has also been popularized in the country as the homeland of the “Jews of the East,” given the strong commercial prowess of its native daughters and sons and the legendary business reputation of the Wenzhouenese. Hessler lists several of the Chinese book titles on offer in the local shops which somehow attempt to account for this. And in keeping with the Hessler tradition, mention of the Jews makes at least one appearance in all of his books. Country Driving is no different in this regard.

In this final section, we learn of Boss Gao and Boss Wang’s newly-minted bra components factory and of some of the quirky personalities who toil on the shop floor over the span of arduous 16-hour shifts. Hessler often interviews them as they’re working. We meet the two Tao sisters, their domineering dad who also works at the factory, keeping vigil on his impressionable young girls and collecting their salary, in addition to the self-improvement-book consuming Master Luo – a man who knows all about chemicals, dyes, and how to mix them. Luo is also the man the two bosses are depending on to help them strike it rich and rapidly expand their physical plant after scoring large orders.

Of all the places Hessler chronicles in this book over his several years on the road, he spends his longest stretch here. Zheijiang that makes the most indelible impression upon Hessler, as we soon learn. His long evenings at restaurants, bars, and stuck in chats with his newfound friends at the factory dorm are the most revealing passages in his work.

Why You Should Read This:

As always, allow me to suggest several reasons why you should read Country Driving:

• Hessler doesn’t mince words. This marks Hessler’s third published work, and the editing team backing him up are just stellar. His writing is crisp and spartan; no-BS writing at its best! Hessler is one of the foremost craftsmen in the “China book” domain.
• Hessler also educates: his interstitials are wonderfully informative. Interspersed throughout the more tender passages are those about the people he happens across. The key historical anecdotes he mixes into the storyline will be of interest to those of you who haven’t spent considerable time in China. You learn as you flip pages.
• Hessler is now part of the Chinese expat canon: I don’t think there’s a China-aspirant or local expat worker or student around who can safely say they haven’t heard of Peter Hessler! It’s this simple: if you want to be a part of the conversation in foreign circles either in China or Stateside (or elsewhere), you absolutely must read him. At least you should buy the Cliff Notes.
• Travel all around China from the comfort if your desk: If you don’t have the time for a long-haul China trip, now’s your chance. Hessler does most of the work for you, using vivid language (not a single photo to be found inside the book’s pages!) to describe scenarios and give us a clear sense of place.
• Damn fine writing: This one’s simple: sit back and devour the pleasant lines of a master craftsman at play. As an amateur at this writing thing myself, I found it jaw-droppingly extraordinary to observe someone who breathes that rarefied air at the very top of his respective pack.

(Pictured above: Sancha village after the corn harvest. Wei Jia runs alongside a newly-shucked pile of cobs).

Let me know how your read went. And of course, if you have any questions, that’s what the comments are for.

All Sancha Photo Credits: Mimi Kuo-Deemer

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