«Monumental... One of the most insightful and sensitive foreign observers [of China]» Financial Times

«Sympathetic... full of warmth» Guardian

More than twenty years after teaching English to the first generation of China to experience an economic boom in a small school in Sichuan province, Peter Hessler returned to teach the next generation. At the same time, his twin daughters became the only Westerners in a student community of about two thousand people at their local elementary school.

Reviving the connection with his former students, who are now in their forties - members of China's "Reform Generation" - and teaching his current undergraduate students, Hessler manages to narrate a uniquely personal story about China's astonishing transformation over the last 25 years.

In the late 1990s, almost all of Hessler's students were the first in their families to enroll in higher education, the children of farmers given little direction as their children entered an entirely new world. In 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China and a new generation of students - an only child, whose education was the subject of intense focus from a much more ambitious and sophisticated group of parents. His new student has a sense of irony about the regime but mostly navigates its constraints with calmness, embracing the incredible opportunities offered by China's boom. However, the pressures of this system of extreme "meritocracy" on a large scale can be fierce, even for much younger children, including his own daughters, giving him a personal perspective on raising a child in China.

In Peter Hessler's hands, China's educational system is the perfect means to examine what has happened in the country, where it is going, and what we can learn from it. At a time when UK-China relations are strained, "Other Rivers" is a vast, truly essential gift, a work of immense human sympathy that rejects cheap stereotypes and shows us China from the inside out and from the bottom up, using this most universally relatable range of experiences. As a window into China and a distant mirror reflecting on our own educational system, "Other Rivers" is a classic work of tremendous value and human interest.

Pages: 464, Dimensions: 16.5x16.5cm