Peter Hessler’s Former Students and the China Earthquake

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  05.23.08 | 1:09 PM ET

A quick note before we head off for the three-day weekend that the New Yorker has posted correspondence from former students of Peter Hessler about their experience in the deadly Sichuan earthquake. “I am sorry to say my parents’ house collapsed,” one wrote. Hessler chronicled his Peace Corps teaching experience in Sichuan Province in the (now classic) travel book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze.