Distinguished Visitor: Peter Hessler

Last week, we celebrated the beginning of term with a formal hall dinner featuring a talk by Peter Hessler, Morningside’s 2017 Distinguished Visitor. Hessler, an award winning writer and journalist, spoke about his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in the town of Fuling (涪陵區), the inspiration for his first book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Hessler shared new insights on contemporary China gleaned from keeping in touch with his past students and returning to a nearly unrecognizable Fuling twenty years later.