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Great Book. Showed me a journey into China without travelling.Excellent for people that marvells understading the opposite culture.
The whole tour is a great adventure, as asking for public opinion is highly dangerous in China, and Gifford has to take several measures in order to stay out of trouble. With this intriguing author, the reader meets a variety of people and places. In China Road - A Journey into the future of a Rising Power, the author Rob Gifford, takes the reader on an extra-ordinary (virtual) journey through China along Route 312. Gifford's style of writing is very catching - exciting, informative and yet humorous at times. The main aim of this journey is to find the answer to one particular question: "Where is China headed. Will it be the new superpower of the future - or will it collapse like the Soviet Union in 1991." Rob Gifford speaks to and discusses with many Chinese, from poor peasants and prostitutes to business men and multi-millionaires. The reader learns tons about China today, China's history, and can form an own opinion based on the vast accumulation of inside information, where China is headed. I recommend this book, without a doubt, to anyone even remotely interested in China, history, or a view of the future.
He ends the book, however, not as the hippy philosopher, Kerouac, but as an astute political scientist and prognosticator of the various possible futures for China, based on her present course. I cried "Pulitzer" once before for Sarah Chayes' book on Afghanistan - that didn't happen, but I would be remiss if I did not say that this book also deserves one.British onetime NPR reporter, Rob Gifford, spent many years in China, speaks fluent Mandarin, and has a strong love/frustration relationship with the enigma which is China, it's people, it's traditions, and it's encouraging/maddening rapid transition from a sleeping dragon to a monster - the capacity and character of which cannot yet be determined. Gifford starts the book as a sandaled, bearded, Kerouac-type hippy traveler busing and hitching along China's backbone route 312, talking to everyone who will talk, from CEO's to Chinese yuppies, to truck drivers, to impoverished farmers, starting in Shanghai and ending up some 3000 miles later at the far west border - having crossed the Gobi Desert on the way. I have read several books on China - of those, this is the best. I would say required reading for anyone who cares about the future, especially college age Americans, whose future will be in many ways entwined with that of China.Besides all that, it is colorfully well written, and a fascinating read.
Book is packed with lots of information and observations on China and it is believable, so lots of interesting storiesI prefer writers who are Chinese best. Or at least Westerners who have some understanding and empathy.Everything in this book is from the writer's American and Christian point of view.If America does something bad in common with China he excuses it, ie tearing down historic buildings is excusable.Abortion is evil.Replacing minority cultures with Han culture is bad but Christian churches are good.Also China must be headed on a straight path to imitate the USA or else it is bad.He seems to think that the Han people have no culture nor beliefs and repeats this often.Also he has a shallow idea of Confucianism which he uses to attack the Chinese.
his focus is on the regular people he meets in his travels and he uses their opinions and experiences to generalize effectively about China.Gifford rarely allows himself to intrude between the reader and the subject. 4.5 Stars. It is an effortless read. But he is also able to provide much detail about China as it is now and has been. He also spends, in my opinion, an inordinate amount of time describing his visit to a small Christian church. Good, plain story-telling obscured by very little if any navel-gazing.
In particular, he makes a number of excessive claims about Christianity, for instance on page 108, "While the person of Christ had focused so much of Western art upon the human form, Chinese art was always more about the landscape - the mountains, the rivers - with human figures often playing just bit parts in the natural drama and grandeur of the painting." (Seriously, he hasn't studied ancient Greek art, Roman, Etruscan, or Egyptian art. Long-time NPR correspondent Rob Gifford writes a very entertaining and educational travelogue of his trip across China. But there is one stretch in the middle of the book, where he's a little too self-confessional, and where he let's his personal religious feelings obscure the story. I have enjoyed Gifford's reporting on NPR (particularly on China) and I enjoyed this book very much.Gifford uses his final trip across China before leaving for a new assignment for NPR in London, after 8 years in China, as a vehicle to give his insights into this chaotic and fast-changing nation that will surely be pivotal in the 21st century. This is an effective tactic; the narrative flows nicely. These didn't set the western patterns).
Fortunately, these diversions are fairly brief and mostly isolated to the part of the book where he describes Shaanxi Province.Overall a good read both as a travel book and a view of 21st century China.
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