Our guest this month is renowned writer Peter Hessler, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of five books about China, most recently Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, published earlier this year by Penguin Press. In the book, Hessler details his most recent stint living in China, teaching writing at Sichuan University in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021. Hessler talked to us about how the new generation of Chinese students differ from those he taught in the late 1990s; his experiences of Covid in 2020; the circumstances in which he left China in 2021; and the uncertain future of China writing.

The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire, a digital business platform that also publishes The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to editor[at]chinabooksreview.com.