In 1996, at the age of 27, Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a city of 200,000 on the banks of the Yangtze River. He was to spend the next two years working as an English teacher at the local college. Subsequently, he wrote his account of his stay in River Town.

Of all the books I’ve read on China, I find that it’s Hessler’s observations that beat all others hands down. Anyone who’s travelled round this vast, contradictory country will recognize the quirks, delights and frustrations that Hessler experiences – for example, the inability to go anywhere without drawing attention to oneself; the horrible lengths of the train journeys – but Hessler’s experiences are just so much more than most people’s. His longest train journey was 50 hours, and he didn’t get a seat in his hard-seat carriage for the first 45. While every foreign traveller gets used to being pointed and stared at in China, Hessler and his friend Adam found themselves on the stage alongside the mayor at a Communist Party rally: they were going on a hike and, dressed in shorts and sandals, only looked in out of curiosity, but such was the attention they attracted that the only way the authorities could ensure the audience looked forward was to usher them onto the stage.

In the end, of course, Hessler develops a warmth for Fuling and its people, even through the intense difficulties. And it’s this portrayal of the people which comes over best, perhaps. My favourite sections are those in which he reproduces extracts from the essays in which his students comment on their American teachers.

‘Our foreign language teachers – Peter and Adam – came to teach us this term. It provides a good opportunity of understanding the American way of life. In my opinion, they are more casual than us Chinese people…For example, when Mr Hessler is having class, he can scratch himself casually without paying attention to what others may say…Last week, when Miss Thompson [another Peace Corps volunteer who visited Fuling] gave us a lecture on the American election, she took off her woollen sweater and tied it to her waist. To us Chinese people, it’s almost unimaginable. How can a teacher do that when she/he is giving a lesson! But, thanks goodness, we major in English and know something about America, it didn’t surprise us. But if other people saw this, they might can’t believe their own eyes.’ 

This book is more than 600 pages long and the writing is small, so for those who can’t be bothered to read it for themselves, here are the most gory and extraordinary bits.

Goullart was Russian, but when revolution broke out in his homeland he escaped to Shanghai. In 1939 he moved to Lijiang, in China’s western Yunnan Province, where he worked as Depot Master for the Chinese government. Nowadays the town’s been given the tourist treatment and, while Lijiang itself is unnaturally clean and pretty, the authorities have been unable to sterilize its very scenic surroundings.

Lijiang is home to the Naxi ethnic minority and Forgotten Kingdom is a must-read for anyone travelling to Yunnan, as it offers intriguing observations on a society that’s now largely changed. The Naxi are still in the area, and still dress in their traditional costume, but their way of life has, inevitably, been affected by the influx of the 21^st century and of tourism. Goullart’s charming memoir gets under the skin and, through stories of the people and his personal escapades, reveals much about the structure of this matrilineal tribe and its customs. Most striking, perhaps, was the Naxi people’s propensity for suicide. Goullart comments that every family in the town had notched up one or two, and most were suicide pacts between runaway lovers. The method of choice tended to be poisoning with the root of black aconite, which paralysed the larynx so that, as the lovers slowly and painfully expired, they were unable to cry for help.