Finding the Way in China

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

My name is Peter Heisler, and I'm a Beijing-based correspondent for The New Yorker. This book is about my experiences driving around mainland China.
In the summer of 2001, I obtained my Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, I roamed the countryside and cities of China. These seven years also coincided with the rapid development of China's automobile industry. In Beijing alone, over a thousand new drivers applied for licenses every day. For several years, the annual growth rate of passenger car sales exceeded 50 percent. In just over two years, the Chinese government built more miles of rural roads than it had in the previous half century.
The book "Finding My Way Through China" follows several distinct themes. It begins with a 10,000-mile journey from the East China Sea coast, westward along the Great Wall, across northern China. Another strand focuses on a rural village transformed by the rapid development of China's auto industry, featuring a peasant family's transition from agriculture to commerce. Finally, it explores urban life in a small industrial town in southeastern China. This transformation, from agriculture to industry to commerce, and from rural to urban, depicted in the book, is the most significant change that has occurred in China since the reforms began in 1978.
"Finding Your Way Through China" concludes my trilogy of nonfiction about China. It explores the economy, traces the origins of development, and explores individual responses to change. Like my previous two books, it examines China's core issues, but does so not through the lens of prominent political or cultural figures, nor through grand, overbearing analyses. Instead, it believes in revealing the essence of China's transformation through the experiences of ordinary Chinese people. I often stay in one place for months, even years, tracking the changes. I don't just listen to the subjects' own stories; I watch with wide eyes as their stories unfold before me.
These three books span my decade in China, from 1996 to 2007. This decade, at the turn of the century, was one of the most pivotal in Chinese history. It was during this decade that China's economy took off, and its influence on the outside world began to grow. More importantly, it was the first decade after Deng Xiaoping's death. During this decade, the face of Chinese history began to change, as large-scale political events and powerful leaders began to recede. Instead, the driving forces behind China's transformation became ordinary people—farmers moving to cities, entrepreneurs learning on the job. Their energy and determination were the defining factor of the past decade. From "River Town" to "Oracle Bones" to "Finding My Way Through China," I tell their stories.
"Finding China" was printed for the 22nd time in April 2019, with a new cover.

2019-04-01

上海译文出版社

430

9787532752805