In 1996 Peter Hessler arrived in China ready to teach English literature at the Fuling Teachers College and to learn about Chinese life. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, winner of the Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction in 2001, celebrates both accomplishments. It also serves as proof that the Peace Corps has had a positive impact. In clear, succinct prose, Hessler details a little-known part of China in the province of Sichuan and wisely allows his students to carry much of the narrative in their raw and original yet romantic voices.

Attendance at Fuling Teachers College for each student meant a new beginning. They were not afraid of hard work, knowing that "the most difficult literature assignment was preferable to wading knee-deep in muck behind a water buffalo." Children of poor peasants, most of their grandmothers had had bound feet and few of their grandfathers had been able to read. They had struggled to win a chance at the life of the mind, an opportunity for their imaginations to soar. Above the banks of the Yangtze, they learn about Shakespeare, putting all their pent up energy into classroom productions of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. With utmost tenderness, Hessler captures a Chinese Horatio cradling a dying Hamlet, saying softly, sadly, "Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Acted on the floor of a cheerless Chinese classroom, the reader is brought up short by how beautiful the scene is.

Hessler quickly learns that his students also sing and recite poetry as part of their lives. Every one of his Fuling students could recite at least a dozen Chinese classics by heart. When he assigned what he thought was a difficult Shakespeare sonnet, they scanned its rhythm, softly beating time on their desks. They "heard" the sonnet, they recognized its music. They could take the first line —"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" —and compose a short paragraph describing the subject. In Hessler's classroom her loveliness came alive again, often transformed into a Tang dynasty beauty.

Or take the story of Robin Hood of Sichuan Forest. Chinese colleges have two purposes: to teach and to indoctrinate. Politics pushed the party line. In Fuling some students saw Robin Hood as an early Mao Zedong, a revolutionary against injustice. Others saw him as a counterrevolutionary, the sort of person who would stir up trouble and disturb the economy. Hessler understood the confusion in his students when they forced literature into a framework of historical materialism or socialism with Chinese characteristics. He had gone through the same "hopeless mess" at Princeton and Oxford trying to satisfy English professors who wanted students to force their views through the stiff academic lenses of deconstructionism, post-modernism, or new historicism.

Away from literature, Hessler jogs, joining a local race, which he wins. He has less success at basketball; Chinese referees insist he double dribbles. He worries about the gigantic Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze; part of Fuling will be lost in the rising waters. But he is met by a sense of fatalism on the part of his students and colleagues. His frustration over learning the language gives way to hard work, which wins him his fluency, character by character. With fluency he learns patience; Mandarin is the language of the north and the elite. Elsewhere in China local dialects defeat him, but he never despairs as he learns more about himself through his Chinese experience. He doesn't suffer alone; the Peace Corps had assigned two teachers to Fuling so he has a buddy, Adam Meir. Together they survive faculty banquets where drinking toasts have drowned many careers.

More than anything, this book bridges the Pacific, helping two giant societies, American and Chinese, understand better the strains that life imposes and offers two of the world's newest and oldest nations. What a joy to read.