China Road

A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

By: Rob Gifford

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

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 20 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 listeners on this journey, he also takes them through China's past and present while he tries to make sense of this complex nation's potential future.

©2007 Robert Gifford (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

A wonderful sense of a nation.

This book is an in-depth vacation without the expense! Rob Gifford did a great job of presenting the many sides and often contradictory nation that is China. He provides enough explanation of the culture and history of the country, along with his own personal insights to his interviews from the road to make them really engaging, informative, and poignant.

I think he also does a really good job of expressing his emotions with the nation, without forcing them on the reader. This book is very personal and about his own experiences with the nation.

An Enlightening Journey Across Present-Day China

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Rob Gifford offers a refreshing, up-close perspective on the people, culture, government, and prospective future of present-day China. The narrative is free from the fear-mongering and doomsday predictions that dominate most Western coverage of China, but is also acutely realistic about the challenges and issues China faces. Plus, it's a great off-the-beaten-path travel story that may inspire you to visit the Middle Kingdom for yourself.

10 yr old same story

This book is 10 years old as of 2017,. yet it doesn't feel old. There are new developments like the ghost cities, the renewed tensions with neighbours etc... but for the most part this is highly relevant. story flows well. There's absolutely no humour in this book, of course what do you expect from an npr corispondent.

China Road

This is a wonderful book on China in modern times and what is happening there. I just finished this book when the Earthquake hit right thru the provinces that I had been reading about. I am now listening to it and love that also.

On the road to the future

This is the story of the rise of China through one journalist's 3000 mile trip down route 321 across the heart of China. Gifford looks into the evolving socialist society with Chinese characteristics as evolves from a very government controlled society as it struggles towards more openness under the fourth generation leadership. The characters Gifford meets along the route paint a hopeful story tainted with tragic remnants of the past that continue to hold on such as the HIV communities swept under the rug and the enforcement of the one child policy.

Great overview from the ground

I found I kept returnong to this book...maybe my hope to curtail my ignorance about modern China or Vance's easy to listen to voice and excellent reading. Either way I came out more enriched. Thanks for this one.

Filled with surprises

I'm astonished at how easy it was to listen to this book on China. It's travel literature and it worked well. It ended too soon.

The author transmitted information is a series of reflections made while traveling through highway 312. It was the most amazing thing. His language skills and ability to integrate history with the new are profound.

Narration was excellent too.

Amazing book

I have been living in China for a few months. Rob Gifford's book is amazing. It has the feelings and emotions of the current reality of China, and has wonderful connections between the daily life of people and its historical and cultural roots. The narrator is also the best narrator I ever heard on Audible. It makes the audiobook better than reading the book. He gives the mystery feeling which is the atmosphere the author I believe wants to convey. I quote this book often in my blog on China and if you have only one book you want to read about today's China, this is definitely the one!

Entertaining

This "road trip" book was written by an English journalist that was taking one last long look at a country that he has spent years living in and reporting on for NPR before ending his foreign assignment and returning to England. Very interesting insider look at the development of China without forsaking the past of 'old hundred names'. The author (with an excellent narrator) speaks fluent Chinese and intersperses the story of local people with his own personal thoughts of what he sees and how he feels about China, the people who live there and their struggle to not only survive, but thrive.

Excellent insights into China. Great storytelling

I "read" this book over a little over a week. It is a road book with great insights into the culture, history, and politics of China. It is refreshing that the author shares his point of view after much musing as he travels. Rob Gifford is a great reporter and a fine thinker. Highly recommended.