NEW YORK, July 17, 2024 — New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler discusses his new book Other Rivers: A Chinese Education (Penguin Press, 2024), an account of two years teaching university students in the Chinese city of Chengdu, with Alec Ash, editor of China Books Review at Asia Society in New York. In the conversation, he talks about how the new generation of Chinese students today differ from those 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. (52 min., 58 sec.)

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China Books Review is co-published by Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations.