Instead of being taught to think for themselves, their job, usually as high school teachers, will be to further the values of the ruling communist class. The young people he was hoping to arouse to a love of English literature turn out to be creatures of an educational system that is intent on churning out indoctrinators of the young. Tilting at windmills, a symbol of futility taken from the doomed student' play, becomes the book's leitmotif. Despite the cute stories of teaching Shakespeare and Beowulf to peasant scholars, banqueting and besting arrogant cadres at drinking games and most tellingly of all, indirectly provoking a mini-uprising in the English faculty when the university vetoes his students' self-written play, the book ends up being a cool and forensic indictment of Chinese society, and all the more ferocious as a result. Hessler manages to achieve something remarkable with the result. Above all, these stories will have foreigners living in China laughing and nodding at the accuracy of his observations.īut this is not all the book is. He meets dozens, if not hundreds of locals, gains their trust and the text is full of the resulting anecdotes. Hessler is an economical yet elegant writer.
It's a brilliantly wry and sometimes moving description of the author's two-year stay in a small city in Sichuan, teaching English literature in a local university. Personal experience, preferably adventurous and emotional, often seems a wonderful way to make a point.
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