March 16, 2020 Issue

Peter Hessler’s “Broken Bonds,” in this week’s issue, is both a pleasure and a disappointment. It’s a pleasure because it kindles memories of his great 2001 memoir River Town, one of my favorite books. It’s a disappointment because it only briefly revisits Fuling, the remote city on the Yangtze, where most of River Town takes place. In 1996, the Peace Corps sent Hessler to teach English to college students in Fuling. Most of “Broken Bonds” is concerned with the Trump government’s cancelation of that Peace Corps program. Hessler says of the cancelation,

It seemed part of a larger American trend: every foreign contact was a threat, every exchange was zero-sum. Instead of trusting themselves and their best models, people regressed to the paranoia of those with closed systems.

It seems like a rotten thing for the government to do. Hessler points out, 

Many volunteers had studied pedagogy as undergrads, and often they returned to teach in U.S. classrooms. But there were others whose life paths were radically transformed. They became diplomats, civil servants, businesspeople, or scholars specializing in China.

For me, the most enjoyable part of “Broken Bonds” is the penultimate section that begins, “In January, I visited Fuling with my family, and one afternoon we went to the former campus.” It brought back memories of Hessler’s wonderful River Town, an immersive account of the two years he spent teaching in Fuling as a Peace Corps volunteer. He reports that the building where he taught is gone, but his former apartment is still standing. “The library was also intact, although its doors were chained shut and many windows were broken.” He says, 

While we were there, a man called out my Chinese name. He introduced himself as a former colleague who was also visiting the campus before it was demolished. Suddenly, I recognized him—in the old days, he sometimes came to my apartment late at night to borrow banned books. In front of the shuttered library, he said, “I remember reading about the Cultural Revolution.” I asked if the authorities had warned him about associating with the Americans, and he smiled shyly. “It wasn’t that direct,” he said. “But we were careful.”

That’s all Hessler has to say about his Fuling visit. I wish he’d written more about it. Are Qian Manli and Wang Dongmei still working at the local Bank of China? Is the Students’ Home still operating? Was the wall mural in the Catholic church courtyard ever painted? Is Father Li still around? These are just some of the things arising from my reading of River Town that I wish he’d explored in “Broken Bonds.” But maybe he’s already explored them. Just before I started writing this post, I googled “Peter Hessler Fuling” and discovered a 2013 National Geographic piece by him titled “Return to River Town.” It’s available only to National Geographic subscribers. I’m considering subscribing.