As a sidebar to this month’s Chinese Buffet series, throughout August, One for the Road will highlight travel guides, reference books and other recommended reads related to life or travel in China.
The one book I knew I had to read before I left for China was Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China. I had read countless rave reviews about Peter Hessler’s narrative non-fiction about life in modern day China, and I had a feeling it would be the perfect crash course book for me to read. My hunch was right — it’s a gem that reads like a novel, weaving a well-told background of ancient history with tales of what life is like for a variety of Chinese living today in cities like Beijing and Shenzhen. The story of Hessler’s friendship with a Uighur named Polat is especially captivating, revealing details of what life is like for a Chinese alien living in the U.S.
I’m glad I waited to read it until the paperback copy came out in early May — it’s still a thick book at just under 500 pages, but the lightweight version worked well reading on the go. I intend to re-read Oracle Bones, as well as Hessler’s first book, River Town, an earlier memoir which chronicles his two years of Peace Corps service in Fuling, along the Yangtze. I highly recommend Oracle Bones to anyone visiting China for the first time — it gave me the perfect framework of what life is like in China, and made it easier to learn more once I began traveling through the country.