China Road
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country's frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China's rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people."Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford's acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China's explosive development open readers' eyes and reward their minds." --Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004From the Hardcover edition.
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Last year I traveled the Silk Road, the ancient road that cuts through China. This year, it's my opportunity to travel down China Road, Route 312, a new superhighway through modern China. Modern China, I have found, is a mass of dangerous contradictions. For one, China is an economic superpower that continues to be ruled by a despotism that severely limits individual freedom but turns a blind eye to industrial pollution and the basic human rights of workers. The Chinese people are unhappy with this situation but nothing is done. The Chinese character seems built on acceptance of the world as unjust place; on fortitude, plugging on as best one can; on putting on a polite face, ignoring problems and speaking banal platitudes about life. A second enormous contradiction is that communism requires strict compliance to the rules imposed on the society and a citizenry kept ignorant but the modern world, especially the modern world market, necessitates an educated citizenry. These contradictions cannot continue. This cannot go on, the author writes, and yet it must, for the sake of a strong global economy.
And China has other, terrible problems the world knows little about. Because of the one-child policy, thousands of baby girls were aborted or killed, leaving a stark shortage of wives for the baby boys who were allowed to live and grow up. Pollution of both water and air is a terrible threat to China's immediate future. Rural poverty is slowly creating an enormous sense of injustice in the people living in the country. Many centuries of totalitarian government both from the inside and the outside have left China far behind the world, especially in technology.
The trip down China Road was no getaway vacation for me.
