Peter Hessler: The Chinese Lingerie Vendors of Egypt

More than a million Chinese are now living and working in Africa, as part of the nation’s ambitious thrust beyond Asia. The most remarkable part of this story involves individual Chinese entrepreneurs, who often find their way to remote and unexpected places. From 2011 to 2016, journalist Peter Hessler lived in Egypt, where he primarily covered the events of the Arab Spring. But while researching in small cities in Upper Egypt, he stumbled upon Chinese migrants who had found a particularly unusual niche: selling lingerie to conservative small-town Egyptians. Over a three-year period, Hessler tracked down Chinese lingerie dealers all along the Nile, and this research gave him new insights into China, Egypt and the role of gender and politics in each culture. Hessler is a staff writer for the The New Yorker whose work is marked by keen observations of social behavior, precise descriptions and skilled contextualizing. He was the magazine’s correspondent in China from 2000 until 2007, and is the author of a trilogy of books on the country: River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Oracle Bones, and Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip. In 2011, Hessler was named a MacArthur Fellow. After leaving China, he moved to Ridgway, Colorado, where he wrote a sharp feature on the local uranium industry, a fascinating profile of Nucla pharmacist Don Colcord and a piece about Trump’s influence on the Western Slope, among others.