{"product_id":"9781847674371","title":"Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eOracle Bones\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eRiver Town\u003c\/i\u003e comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy, on the human side of the economic revolution in China. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of the average people—farmers, migrant workers, entrepreneurs—who have reshaped the nation during one of the most critical periods in its modern history. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCountry Driving\u003c\/i\u003e begins with Hessler's 7,000-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau. He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which changes dramatically after the local road is paved and the capital's auto boom brings new tourism. Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePeter Hessler, whom \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e calls \"one of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China,\" deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Canongate Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47051057823984,"sku":"9781847674371","price":22.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781847674371_p0.jpg?v=1763747837","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781847674371","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}