Product Description

Running 3,000 miles from the eat-coast boomtown of Shanghai to the border of Kazakhstan in the north-west, Route 312 - China's 'Route 66' - is a road that Rob Gifford has always wanted to travel. Gifford's journey and his desire to get to the heart of this country make China Road an outstanding and funny travel narrative - part pilgrimage, part reportage - which illuminates a country on the move.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27827 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'Fascinating ... gives us a privileged view of China's dark corners and its exhilarating vistas' Daily Telegraph 'Gifford gets under the skin of the world's next superpower ... he's the perfect guide' ***** Wanderlust 'Gifford is one of the few Europeans to have made the whole journey as a hitchhiker. On the way, as splendidly recorded in China Road, he takes the temperature of a nation' Giles Foden, Conde Nast Traveller 'An absorbing cultural trip ... Conversations with truckers, hookers, karaoke-bar hostesses and peasants are interspersed with briefings on the status, politics and past of the country' The Times

Saturday Telegraph
'fascinating and refreshingly unsolipsistic travelogue ... hugely
authoritative'

Daily Telegraph
'utterly surprising and deeply personal book ...a compelling
adventure'

Customer Reviews

Balanced viewpoint
Rob Gifford, journalist, long term resident in China and fluent Mandarin speaker, takes one last journey along the old Silk Road (modern day route 312) before leaving China for a posting in London. Travelling the route using a combination of hitching, public transport and taxis, he contemplates and talks to the people he meets about the state of China, how it got there, and where it might be going.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A very easy read (Gifford's journalistic background is amply demonstrated), it seemed to cover a lot of ground, seamlessly passing from travelogue to interviews to background knowledge on aspects of Chinese culture and history influencing the current state of the country, a history that the Communist government has tried to bury, but which it ignores at its peril. His respect for the Chinese people permeates the whole book, along with his ambivalence about its government, castigating on one side its attitude to the 'Old Hundred Names' (the heart of the Chinese population) and widespread local corruption, whilst appreciating the challenges inherent in governing what is, in effect, an emerging continent.
Using his journalistic and language skills and his familiarity with China to the full, Gifford provides a portrait of China that too few westerners (including Michael Palin) could get anywhere near achieving. If you want a glossy travelogue, then this is not the book to read. If you want an intelligent but readable discussion about where the most heavily populated nation on earth might be heading, then it certainly is. It might not go into the sort of depth that some might want (hence 4 rather than 5 stars), but if you are a beginner like me, it's an excellent primer.

Solid Introduction to Modern China
I'm a fan of travelogues and since I'm trying to get a little more clued in about modern China, this book seemed like a good pick. After spending seven years as a correspondent for NPR, author Gifford packed his bags in 2004 to move back to England and struck out for one last Chinese adventure. Over the course of two weeks, he made his way along "Route 312", which winds a roughly northwest 3,000-mile route from Shanghai to the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford preaces hiss journey with the hope that it will help him answer the question he gets all the time about China: will it become the next global superpower, or will it crumble into chaos? With that in mind, he's off (along with an NPR production crew) on a motley assortment of buses and trucks, meeting all manner of people, from angry poor farmers to slick rich businessmen, and everyone in between (including some zealous Amway reps!). The most memorable of his casual encounters is probably the traveling government abortionist who matter-of-factly explains the need for forced abortions to Gifford.

His travels touch on pretty much everything someone reasonably conversant with modern China might already be familiar with: rural civil unrest, AIDS epidemics, the sex-trade industry, the shortage of woman in some areas, the pervasiveness of official corruption, ecological catastrophes in the making, the rise of religion, the political repression and cultural conversion of ethnic minorities, and of course the booming economic development and the confusing winds of change that follows in its wake. It's all good stuff, ably reported, however it struck me as somewhat superficial in a sense. These are all stories anyone reasonably attuned to international news and trends has probably heard on NPR, read in the Washington Post or the Economist, or seen on Frontline. The one area he doesn't touch upon, and probably should have, is the Chinese military and its vast role in China's politics and economics. Another quibble I have with the book is Gifford's blithe willingness to trot out all manner of "official" Chinese statistics throughout the book, despite general acknowledgement in much of the world that official Chinese data is hardly a reliable representation of the truth.

In conclusion, Gifford returns to the broader picture of What It All Means, and fails miserably at providing a satisfying answer. Having introduced his trip with the uneccesarily binary "will China rise or fall?" motif, he now reluctantly returns to the question, ultimately sidestepping it. This all smacks of an editor's attempt to impose a larger framework on the book, and Gifford is so obviously uncomfortable in this role that it becomes embarrassing to read on as he flails around in the role of analyst, quoting the opinions of several China scholars and pundits at length rather than providing his own analysis. One can't help but wish that someone with such depth and breadth of experience in China could have arrived at a more insightful conclusion. Still, the book has great value as an easy to read and often fun introduction to modern China for those who are interested but don't know much.

Could have been so much better
Like the previous reviewer, I also read this book after coming back to the UK from China. But while it's far from a bad book, this feels more like a missed opportunity. Rob Gifford has obviously spent a long time in China, but sadly his depth of knowledge and love/hate relationship just aren't conveyed.
His journey from one end of China to the other should be a great way to sum up such a complex country, but instead the reader has a string of superficial observations, linked by irrelevant personal info (I'm all for writers making themselves part of the story but there has to be a reason or a lesson - or at least be amusing) as he glosses over a string of stories.
Some are well told and really encapsulate the problems and potential of today's China, but these highlights are few. One brief observation about Chinese Muslims loving Osama bin Laden is glossed over in about three paragraphs - surely there must have been more to say!
Meanwhile he spells out his observations after each event - presumably not convinced that the reader can draw his own opinion - which begins to grate.
It's a shame as this book had a lot to offer - and for someone interested in the country, with time on their hands, it's still worth a read. However, in its place I'd highly recommend River Town/Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler to see what this book should have been.