China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power
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National Public Radio's Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world's most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford's twenty years of observing first-hand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China's border with Kazakhstan. As he takes the reader on this journey, he will also take us through China's past and present while he tries to make sense of this complex nation's potential future. The Washington Post - Susan L. Shirk Gifford's book is an account of a two-month trip he took along Route 312, which spans the country from east to west like an oriental Route 66. He draws on the extensive knowledge he acquired during six years of reporting from Beijing for National Public Radio. Although not as adventurous a traveler or as vivid an observer as Colin Thubron (whose Shadow of the Silk Road covers some of the same route), Gifford weaves into his travelogue a crash course in Chinese history, geography, economy and society. To him, China is a land of contrasts, and "for every fact that is true…the opposite is almost always true as well, somewhere in the country."
Introduction: The Mother Road xiiiThe Promised Land 3Dislocation 14Things Flow 28The Unfinished Revolution 41"A Single Spark Can Light a Prairie Fire" 51Silicon Valley 64"Women Hold Up Half the Sky" 76"Put the People First" 86Power 97The Hermit of Hua Shan 112Elvis Lives 125The Last Great Empire 140Monks and Nomads 153No Longer Relying on Heaven 165"We Want to Live!" 177Respect 194The End of the Wall 205The Caves of a Thousand Buddhas 215Endurance 227The Great Wall of the Mind 236"China Is a Colonial Power" 248From Sea to Shining Sea 259A Road Is Made 273Acknowledgments 297Select Bibliography 301Index 305
