Book description
Running 3,000 miles from the east-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.
Rob Gifford first went to China in 1987 as a twenty-year-old
undergraduate, to study the language. A fluent Mandarin speaker and
former BBC producer, he has spent twenty years studying, visiting and
reporting on China. From 1999 to 2005 he was Beijing correspondent for
the US network, National Public Radio. During that time he travelled
all over China, from Tibet to the Russian border, and from the Muslim
northwest to North Korea. He is now NPR's London bureau chief.
