Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler

Oracle Bones is Peter Hessler's second book and is even better than the first one (called River Town). What I like about the book is that it connects distant lands and time periods, from Western China to Canton and to America, from the neolithic oracle bones to modern teachers. Big leaps in time and space, but somehow still connected into a single narrative. At the same time, this is not a single narrative but a collection of individual stories, sometimes seemingly unconnected, yet still flowing in the same direction.

Another fun thing is that Hessler steps out of the realm of stereotypes. Almost anything he writes about is atypical, the people, the circumstances, the times. So anything you look at, if you look close enough, is quite different from the general category it is in.

The term "oracle bones" refers to the tortoise plastrons used by the ancient diviners of the Shang dynasty. They cracked the bones and divined on the basis of the cracks. In the process, they also scratched short sentences onto the surface of the bones, and these are today the earliest examples of Chinese writing.

Hessler's Oracle Bones is a book about how China's present mirrors its past, and vice versa. If you were to read a book about China, read this one.