Literary Analysis Essay on Country Driving by Peter Hessler

Introduction

Peter Hessler, the resident journalist correspondent to the New Yorker, takes the reading audience to the Chinese countryside through a road trip that showcases the changes taking place in the rural areas where the economic landscape is taking a new shape. In the upcoming decade, the country of China will have a completed a network of highways that will connect all its urban populations in a road expansion project that is meant to open up the underdeveloped regions. Once finished, the final expressway network is expected to be much longer than the network of expressways in the United States. This effort to connect all the Chinese population is not limited to the urban links of highways as there are all-weather roads being put up in the rural interior by the government. The author claims that all vast network mileage of the roads is not for aesthetic value as they are already filled with cars. As recent back as 2010, China had already overtook the United States by the number of domestic automobiles in use in the country. This road and automotive transformation is vividly described by the journalist-cum-author who uses observation to convey the rapid economic transformation taking place in China.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Despite massive investment in the transit and high speed systems, China is not only becoming a global leader in sustainable public transport but also in becoming a country of drivers. Most of the people have probably owned only a bicycle in their lives but the burgeoning middle class is fast acquiring vehicles as well. The city of Beijing alone, with a dense population of over 20 million people, has more than 1000 registered drivers every day and an even higher number of vehicles sold each day. The country's move away from communism which did not previously allow private ownership of vehicles, coupled with the portrayal of a car as a mark of social status in the Chinese society, have led the country's administration to prepare for a drastically growing automobile and auto-related infrastructure like roads.

Country Driving as a text is classified into three distinct segments with each one of them highlighting an aspect of the rapid transportation progress happening in China and giving a unique perspective into the various ways that cars are changing the Chinese urban sphere. In the first segment of the books classification, the author captures his road trip across the Great Wall of China in his car, a traveling option that remains relatively new in exploring the rural side. One of the most remarkable and enjoyable parts of this book touches on the author's detailed description of driving education in China. Obtaining a driving license calls for an individual to undertake training courses and practical driving training after which they are tested through an examination. However, it is the course content and driving tests that comically portray how the Chinese citizens are clueless when it comes to familiarity with driving skills.

Peter Hessler recounts observing driving instructions in Lishui in the southern province of Zhejiang. This is the part of China that the author spent over half a decade. The novice drivers in the driving school spent the first day of their training in class while practicing how to shift a gear with the motor off. The second day of training saw the students succeed to move the training car although they spent the next 10 days practicing on how to park a car. It is hilarious to note the duration it takes the students to master the basics of driving. They eventually learn how to drive a motor vehicle by virtue of becoming proficient in the bridge made of a single wooden plank. The instructor attached the importance of mastering this skill to its challenging difficulty. The majority of the students were adult learners who had never owned an automobile in their entire lives, meaning they did not have a reason to question the value of the driving skills they were being taught. They only undertook driving as aspiring car owners and to have something to write in their resumes.

Inexperience on the part of the driving community in China is worsened by planning blunders that happen in the nation's construction industry because road building is as unfamiliar to them as is driving cars. The author proves these planning mistakes by availing an example from one of the Beijing neighborhoods where the roads have left-turn lanes that have been situated on the far right sides and the traffic lights that signal green lights in all the directions for each part of the cycle. While these hitches may seem minor from the outset, poor planning and inexperienced drivers is a challenging combination that leads to high rates of crash fatalities. The author notes that in the year 2001, the Chinese car population was a mere fifth to that of the United States but the former had twice as many fatalities as the latter.

The second segment of the Country Driving text delves into the transformation that a certain family has experienced as their Sancha village has opened up due to a recently completed road. The experiences of the Sancha villagers are derived from the discovery of the area by the nearby Beijing middle class citizens who frequent the village as an ideal travel destination for the weekends. This segment is interesting due to the decisions and choices that the family has to make with regards to their housing, employment, and education need. The segment is also interesting because it captures the real accounts of people on how they are adapting to the changes brought about by the new road and the affordability of the automobile by the rising Chinese middle class. The economic progress has made them afford items that they could previously only dream of but thanks to the circulation of money and the transport network, they are better off unlike before. Evidence of a booming economy in Sancha is seen through the absence of the young folk who have all ventured into the cities where there are lucrative employment opportunities. The absence of the stronger generation of villagers is a blessing in disguise to Hessler as it enables him to secure a room to rent. There are obvious signs that the village is going through a booming economy due to the trooping visitors of motorized Beijing tourists. Thanks to their influx there are even restaurants that have been opened. However, it is not as informative as the other segments because it tells the changes at an individual level unlike the other sections that show the economic changes brought about by the transport network at a larger scale.

Hessler also attracts the attention of policy makers and planners alike through the third section of his text because it dwells on the development of land. The author talks about how the new highways in the southern Zhejiang province have led to the complete change of the region from an underdeveloped and abandoned rural area to the mushrooming of manufacturing townships. Country Driving explains how the new road network in the province has led to the specialization in manufacturing in the region while boosting the rapid spread of urbanization at the same time. Peter Hessler even goes from one town to the next one while asking onlookers and bystanders on the way what was manufactured in their particular location. The people would retort by either simply raising a product they were holding or by explaining in a sentence. This specialization in the manufacturing sector is an economic boost to China thanks to the new transport network and accelerated and development.

China is a place where if the road is not new, then it is uncharted and if not, then it is not finished. The rules governing the use of roads and driving tenets are largely ignored, disorganized, or never consistent. There are urban centers in the rural interior that do not have traffic police to man the roads which are then left to glass fiber models strategically placed on the curb. Besides a shallow driving course content, the driving schools also have driving instructors who are rarely capable of driving themselves. The new car owners enjoying the newly constructed expressways are first time drivers who had never owned a car in their lives. The author captures all these observations from the moment he receives a driver's license. The car hire business in China is underdeveloped while scratches and dents on the bodies of the vehicles signify the high rate of accidents in China.

It is hilarious in one of the scenes of the book where the author mentions to Mr. Wang that he hit a dog only for the latter to ask the former if he managed to eat the hit dog. Mr. Wang is the proprietor of the budding car hire enterprise. The driving culture is different from the one Peter Hessler was accustomed to in the United States because even hitch hikers keep chatting him up; although this does not take away the fact that the road network in China is opening the doors of economic growth and progress for the citizens. The author keeps on driving through the rural interior undeterred by the contradicting road signs makes a man with knowledge to turn into three heads and six arms.

Revamped transport in terms of a new road network and a rising middles class that can afford cars have increased the probability of almost all products in the world ending up in China as either a finished product or a recycled raw material. The new industrialized towns of Zhejiang have perfected specialization because there are entire cities that manufacture a single product. There is Wenzhou, Yiwu, and Datang cities that have specialized in making 70% of the global cigarette lighters, 25% of all plastic straws, and a third of all the world socks respectively. Most of the former agricultural families in these cities have realized a new way of earning a reliable income without as much as a formal education. The multiplier effect of the transport network on the rural economies is clearly visible.