by Rob Gifford
If the Communist Party does not start making political reforms, I fear that, looking toward 2020, that ride could become very bumpy indeed, as the pressures and the contradictions in Chinese society become too great.
And always lurking at the back of my mind is the fear that the weight of two thousand years of imperial history is stacked against the possibility of democratic reform. I am afraid that the methods of holding the state together are incompatible with allowing the state to change, that a united China, a united empire, will continue to be more important to the leaders than the possibility of a changed China. And I fear that the Chinese state, which has always been more important than the individual, may end up betraying the Chinese people all over again.
But in the end I cannot be completely pessimistic, and, on balance, I cannot end this book on a pessimistic note. Perhaps because I have seen with my own eyes over twenty years (and all along Route 312) how far China has come. The great Chinese author Lu Xun asked all these questions back in the dark days after the collapse of the 1912 Revolution. In 1921 he wrote a short story called “My Old Home.” In it, Lu describes how he returns to his hometown after twenty years away and meets his old playmate, who has remained stuck in the village while the narrator has gone off and become an educated urbanite. Lu Xun feels an invisible wall between them, and a sense of pessimism pervades the story, even though his nephew and his old friend’s son get along well and he hopes they can have “a new life, a life we have never experienced.”
Lu Xun worries that his hope may be misplaced, because he is so conscious of the pull of China’s past, of its heritage and its inescapable history. But he heads back to the city from his old home, and as he goes he thinks what I have been thinking as I have traveled along Route 312: that yes, there is a difference now, and there is a cause for hope amid all the problems. Chinese people, even more now than in the 1920s, are starting in a very small way to be in charge of their own destiny. They’re writing their own words on the Chinese parchment, and their future will be less and less decided by fate or by the emperor or by the forces of nature. They are, as Lu Xun writes at the end of his story, making their own future, imperfectly, painfully, but hopefully along the road.
Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth has no roads to begin with…but when many people pass one way, a road is made.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book began life as a seven-part radio series for National Public Radio that was broadcast in August 2004. (You can hear the series at www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2004/aug/china_road). A year after my two-week trip for the radio series, I traveled Route 312 again in the summer of 2005, this time for two months. China Road is consequently the sum of two trips along the road, plus a brief return visit to Shanghai and Nanjing. Although this offended my journalistic sensibilities, there was no other way to do it.
Like all authors, I have many debts of gratitude. My first is to my employer, NPR, and especially to its senior foreign editor, Loren Jenkins, whose support for the radio series and the book is typical of the encouragement he has always given me. I would also like to thank Barbara Rehm, Ted Clark, Kevin Beesley, Bob Duncan, the staff of the NPR reference library, and Hugo Boothby in the NPR London office. A big thank-you goes to my editor at Random House, Susanna Porter, who gave me excellent guidance on the book, and even laughed at my jokes occasionally. Thanks also to my agent in Washington, Gail Ross, who took a chance on a first-time author, and to her creative director, Howard Yoon, who gave me crucial input at a critical time.
Many academics have helped me along the way, including Richard Baum at UCLA and Andrew Nathan at Columbia. Robbie Barnett, also at Columbia, read the whole Tibetan section and put me straight on a number of important points. James Millward at Georgetown read the whole second half of the manuscript, and was enormously helpful in his comments about the Uighurs and Xinjiang. My thanks go especially to John Flower of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who read the entire manuscript, and gave so generously of his time and knowledge in his comments. Needless to say, any faults or mistakes that remain are entirely my own.
In China, I benefited from conversations with many friends in the foreign press corps. I would especially like to thank James Kynge, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, James Miles, Jim Yardley, Charles Hutzler, Holly Williams, Anthony Kuhn, Louisa Lim, Mike Lev, Henry Chu, John Pomfret, Adam Brookes, Duncan Hewitt, and Frank Langfitt. A few of the photos are my own, but most of them—all the good ones, in fact—were taken by Patrick Fraser, who traveled the road after me. A big thank-you to him. (Patrick’s fantastic work can be seen at www.patrickfraserphotography.com. There are also more of Patrick’s photos on my website, www.robgifford.com). Thanks also to Bob Kapp, Bino Feng, Greg Barker, Kurt Selles, Tony Lambert, Mila Rosenthal, and Caitrin McKiernan.
There are many Chinese people to thank, particularly those who opened up their homes and their hearts to me along Route 312. Some of them wish to remain anonymous, and there are several names in the book that I have changed to protect their identity. I live in hope for a day when that is no longer necessary. My assistant, Liang Yan, traveled the length of Route 312 with me for the radio trip, adding a huge amount to my understanding of everything, as she always does. I made the second trip on my own. Jasmin Gu gave me great research help in Shanghai.
I am forever grateful to my parents, Graham and Geraldine, who first put me on the right road. They made some excellent suggestions, as did my wife’s parents, Rosemary and Lloyd. My children, Amy and Daniel, gave me endless encouragement while I was planning and writing the book, even though it took me away from them for long periods of time. I am extremely proud of them, and confess that I love having children who were Made in China.
Most of all, my thanks go to my wife, Nancy, who has lived through every moment of this book, and everything that went before. Her love, faith, wisdom, and patience, not to mention her skills as an editor, are infused into every page—every word—of what I have written, just as they are infused into every corner of my life. She has made so many things both possible and memorable, and this book is dedicated with much, much love to her.
R.K.G.
London
March 2007
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
and
Suggestions for Further Reading
Barnett, Robert. Lhasa: Streets with Memories. Columbia University Press, 2006.
Beautiful book about the many layers of the Tibetan capital, and the many layers of Tibet’s tragic history to be found there.
Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth. Washington Square Press, 2004; first published in 1931.
The classic novel of one farmer’s life and loves, set against the tumultuous, changing canvas of 1920s China.
Cable, Mildred, with Francesca French. The Gobi Desert. Macmillan, 1944.
One of the great China travel books, written by two middle-aged English missionaries.
Cable, Mildred, and Francesca French. Through Jade Gate and Central Asia: An Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert. Constable & Co., 1927.
Another book of Gobi travels from two of the intrepid Trio.
Clissold, Tim. Mr. China: A Memoir. Collins, 2006.
Wonderful tale of trying to ride the China investment wave in the 1990s and losing $418 million in the process.
Economy, Elizabeth. The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future. Cornell University Press, 2004.
Shocking summary of China’s environmental meltdown.
Fleming, Peter. News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir. London: Jonathan Cape, 1936.
Intrepid young journalist travels across a disintegrated China in the 1930s.
Goldstein, Melvyn C. The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama. University of California Press, 1999.
Excellent, short summary of the Tibet Problem from the doyen of Tibet-watchers.
/> Hessler, Peter. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. HarperCollins, 2001.
Timeless, personal account of teaching for two years in the late 1990s in a town on the Yangtze River.
Hopkirk, Peter. Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Central Asia. Oxford University Press, 1980.
The definitive account of Aurel Stein and the other “robbers” of Dunhuang.
Jenner, W.J.F. The Tyranny of History: The Roots of China’s Crisis. Penguin, 1992.
Shockingly negative but staggeringly brilliant analysis of China’s political culture.
Kynge, James. China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future—and the Challenge for America. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Award-winning analysis of how a hungry China is shaking the world economically.
Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433. Oxford University Press, 1997.
The amazing story of Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He.
Lu Hsun. Selected Stories. W. W. Norton, 2003.
A great introduction to some of Lu Xun’s best short stories (using the old spelling of his name).
Macartney, Lord George (ed. J. L. Cranmer-Byng). An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung 1793–1794. Folio Society, 2004.
Beautiful reproduction of the original diary, including watercolors painted by the embassy’s artist, William Alexander.
Millward, James A. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. Columbia University Press, 2006.
The definitive academic history of Xinjiang, China’s Muslim Northwest.
Pei, Minxin. China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. Harvard University Press, 2006.
Excellent, quite academic analysis of why China won’t be able to make the transition to multiparty democracy.
Pomfret, John. Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. Henry Holt, 2006.
The dean of China correspondents tells the story of his twenty-five-year love affair with China.
Spence, Jonathan. The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds. W. W. Norton, 1999.
Fascinating tour of how Westerners have seen China through the ages.
Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. W. W. Norton, 1999.
The definitive modern history of China from the master of the genre.
Studwell, Joe. The China Dream: The Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002.
In-depth look at Westerners’ obsession with the China market.
Taylor, Howard, and Mrs. Howard Taylor. The Biography of James Hudson Taylor. Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.
Biography of one of the greatest missionary figures of nineteenth-century China.
Terrill, Ross. The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means for the United States. Basic, 2004.
Very well researched and well written analysis, linking China’s past, present, and future.
Tu Wei-ming, ed. The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford University Press, 1991.
Academic but highly readable tome that digs deep into the search for a modern Chinese identity.
Tyler, Christian. Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang. Rutgers University Press, 2004.
A more journalistic history of Xinjiang.
And a couple of good websites:
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/
Kenneth Pomeranz and Bin Wong’s website about how China was far ahead of the West and how it fell behind.
http://xiakou.uncc.edu
John Flower’s excellent, detailed website exploring the many layers of life in one village in the mountains of Sichuan province.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROB GIFFORD first went to China in 1987 as a twenty-year-old language student. He has spent much of the last twenty years studying and reporting there. From 1999 to 2005, he was the Beijing correspondent of National Public Radio, and he traveled all over China and the rest of Asia reporting for Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He is now NPR’s London bureau chief.
www.RobGifford.com
Copyright © 2007 by Robert Gifford
Map copyright © 2007 by David Lindroth, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-634-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gifford, Rob.
China road : a journey into the future of a rising power / Rob Gifford.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. China—Description and travel. 2. China—Social life and customs. 3. Gifford, Rob—Travel—China. I. Title.
DS712.G53 2007
951.06—dc22 2006051123
www.atrandom.com
All photographs by Patrick Fraser except insert photo (7, 8), photo (19), photo (20, 21), photo (33), and photo (34) from the author’s collection
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