| China Road |  | Author: Rob Gifford
Publisher: Blackstone Audio Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $18.87
as of 9/10/2010 14:29 MDT details
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Seller: blackstone_audiobooks
Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 2,296,974
Media: MP3 CD
Edition: Unabridged
Pages: 200
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0786169621
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.06
EAN: 9780786169627
ASIN: 0786169621
Publication Date: May 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 95
 Truth but Subjectively Filtered July 11, 2010
Jun Xu (Shanghai, Shanghai, CN)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The book "China Road" is worth a read, but under some conditions, because many things, among which the most important one: the author has lived in China for 20 more years and ended with hating China.
Rob is a journalist, thus professionally for attracting purpose he puts in bag every dark corner and nearly ignores most of the nice things except for the delicious Chinese food, which he cannot help appraising, and even such he has only mentioned in very few sentences in the book. The author has recorded quite many facts, although dark-filtered. And they are indeed quite well summarized in one book.
Rob gives me the feeling that he regards himself sitting in the middle of the world, rather than the Chinese do as he has hinted. And this might have led to the many of his strange opinions on the battles that British had given to China, on the US wars in Iraq, on the England-Scotland relationship, on Tibetan's teaching Chinese to Tibetan (do Englishman not teach Chinese to Englishman?), on globalization's diluting local cultures, on being proud of being hairy, etc., etc.
China does have much to improve as the author has suggested truly - much in its politics, but isn't the western democracy worth being questioned of just serving the richest and richer people in the society?
The author is really good at seizing the western eyeballs by fully emphasizing on what the readers might have been expecting, although his idea of travelling along the China national route 312 is such a creative one.
I suggest the readers either treat this book as a tourist guide, or read it with more "really?"-like-questions by yourselves.
 Fascinating insights from a westerner who speaks the language July 3, 2010
Robin (Bethesda, Moldova, Republic of)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Rob Gifford is that rarest of birds, a westerner who speaks and writes Chinese well enough to explain, not only what is going on, but the nuances of what is meant. In China Road Gifford describes his farewell tour of China, a trip taken as he took leave of China after six years of reporting. Gifford travels the Silk Road and his observations of modern China, juxtapositioned with his discription of modern and ancient Chinese history, are very interesting indeed.
Gifford obviously loves China, and because he loves it, he is critical. Much as he enjoys the wonderful food, the excitment of watching a country change and the fascinating culture, he can't help but be appalled at the oppression of free speech not to mention the pollution and brutal behavior of the businesses there. As Gifford observes, when baby formula was revealed to be defective it was immediately removed from western shelves--while in China they waited until babies were dying.
I listened to this audio book immediately after reading Maarten Troost's Lost in Planet China and it was a good decision. (Both books are narrated by Simon Vance, an odd, if entertaining coincidence.) Troost and Gifford visited many of the same places--Tibet, the Library Caves and the Great Wall. Troost's descriptions of Tibet and the ways that China has literally destroyed the culture there, made an interesting counterpoint to Gifford's more tolerant feeling that many Chinese geniuinely want to improve the lives of Tibet's poorest people. Gifford's rationalization that the Chinese behavior toward Tibet is no worse that the American's behavior toward the Plains Indians seemed weird. (Does this make it any less awful?) But he was able to talk to Tibetans about the situation and how the people must learn Chinese and work with the Chinese if they are to escape poverty.
Gifford's deep understanding of Chinese writing and his excellent explaination of how Chinese writing might influence Chinese thoughts and ideas--was fascinating.
At the end of this book I was sad that Gifford was leaving China. I wanted to tell him to go back, live there a few years more--and please, write about it!
China Road, comprehensive with details May 17, 2010
Patricia P. Vue
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book China Road by Rod Gifford is a well written and narrated book on CD for anyone who is interested in understanding the historical events in China evolving to current day. The metropolitan areas such as Beijing and Shanghai boast of abundance of the world's products but a little ways outside of these major cities you have the country's poorest living beyond the invisible wall of luxury. Basic infrastructure such as indoor plumbing is not even available nor electricity. These people are the ones the author has had the opportunity to interview and review what living in China meant to them, their children, and their grandparents.
 Yet another western journalist's "expert" opinion of China May 14, 2010
Zhôngguó Jane
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
China is quite intimidating to westerners, but it doesn't necessarily mean that people still aren't interested in China. As such, publishing conglomerates such as Random House are more than happy to release mass-market fare like China Road so people can read about China and claim they know something of the culture without ever having to go there. And herein lies the pity of it all, for I highly doubt that most of the people who gave a five-star rating to China Road have ever actually been on a China road! If they had (package vacations to Xi'an and Shanghai don't count!), they would agree that Rob Giffard's opinions and summaries about Chinese culture are shallow and superficial at best, his oversimplification of the people insulting, and his descriptions of the country about as exciting as the back of a postcard. Yet another foreign correspondent getting paid to have an artificial experience in China, write about it, then claim they are an "expert" on the culture.
Easy read, covers the critical concerns concisely April 29, 2010
C. Atkinson (Golden, CO)
The author has written an entertaining travelogue that reflects both his knowledge gained as an NPR reporter living in China of the multiple cultural and economic aspects of modern China that are creating stress fractures within China, as well as a true love and appreciation of the poeple of China.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 95
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