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River Town
- Two Years on the Yangtze
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
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River Town
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Publisher's Summary
In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society.
Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.
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Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2023-04-24
A great listen!
I really enjoyed the story! I thought maybe the fake Chinese accent was too much, but overall I enjoyed hearing about Peter’s time in China,
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ld133
- 2021-03-15
River Town
Most westerners are used to seeing China at a great distance, and it can be understandably hard to see it as another piece of the earth, inhabited by humans. We are indeed different, with different histories and systems shaping us. Hessler offers us the chance to not only see how we are different, but to understand how we are similar.
I’m a foreigner in Chongqing, which is nowadays only a 1.5 hour drive from Fuling, and I found the insight into the people of this region very meaningful. Hessler did the legwork of being one of the first foreigners in Fuling. Even though he was here over 20 years ago and many things have changed, I recognize many of the experiences and feelings he had, as some things have not changed at all.
I also appreciate that Hessler included impressions of the ancient parts of Fuling and Fengdu before the Three Gorges Dam project flooded them forever. He recorded this history... a snapshot of the landscape, cities, and people we would not have known about otherwise. This is how I felt about the entire book, because he was able to experience places and people that I never will. His dedication to learning the language and integrating into his community is not that common for foreigners in China these days.
The narrator has a nice voice, except for his mispronunciation of Chinese words, and the fake accents that I thought were borderline offensive at certain points. The Chinese words don’t affect the understanding of the story because they are translated, but virtually all the words were pronounced incorrectly. The only words I remember being correct were “Chongqing”, “Fuling” and maybe “Sichuan”. There were also some parts where voices were read with a strong fake “Chinese” accent. Those voices don’t sound anything like a mandarin or Sichuanese speaker speaking English, and at times seemed to mimic western impressions of Chinese people. I want listeners who want to learn about China to know that these aspects of the audiobook are inaccurate in my opinion.
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