This fall, St. Peter is reading John Pomfret’s Chinese Lessons. Copies of the book are available around town, either for sale or simply to borrow. The Washington Post calls it “compulsively readable.” In the book, reporter Pomfret recounts the stories of five classmates who he met at the University of Nanjing when he was one of the first American students to study in China in 1981. Since then, Pomfret became a Washington Post reporter, the head of their Beijing bureau in the 1990s, and after serving as a foreign correspondant in Bosnia, the Congo, and Afghanistan, has been appointed editor of their Outlook section. You can learn more at his Website for the book, or listen to his commentary on China’s economy, Chinese nationalism, or illegal immigration. You can also read an interview with him from Frontline, or read his account of one of his fellow students and his change from Red Guard member to entrepreneur – a fellow known as “Book Idiot Zhou.”
Tags: Chinese Lessons, John Pomfret
