![]() ![]() They came from rural backgrounds, and usually they were the first members of their families to receive a college education. Most Fuling students had been born around the time that Mao Zedong died, in 1976, and they had grown up with “Reform and Opening,” the sweeping economic changes initiated by Deng Xiaoping. But there was a strong intimation of future change: downstream, the government was constructing the Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam in the world, which would radically transform the landscape and towns like Fuling.Īt Fuling Teachers College, Hessler and Meier’s students were training to become English teachers in Chinese middle schools, part of the nation’s massive effort to improve language skills and engage with the outside world. For most of Hessler and Meier’s first year, they were the only foreign residents in Fuling. At that time, Fuling felt remote - there was no highway or railroad, and in order to reach Chongqing, the nearest big city, residents usually took the eight-hour river boat. ![]() Along with Adam Meier, another young volunteer, he was sent to teach in Fuling, a small city at the junction of the Wu and Yangtze rivers, in Sichuan province. In 1996, at the age of twenty-seven, Peter Hessler joined the third group of Peace Corps volunteers to work in China. ![]()
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