Reviews
“Armchair travel doesn’t come much funnier, or more enlightening, than this. The 3,000-mile Route 312, which runs from Shanghai to Kazakhstan, provides the backdrop to Gifford’s rollicking Chinese road-trip. Undertaking to travel the length of this great highway, the irrepressible Gifford encounters more wonderful people and places than he ever imagined, and provides rare reportage into life in a land defined by rapid economic growth. “
Daily Telegraph, London
“Gifford writes well, and is rich in empathy. Of the (too) many books about China, this is an outstanding one.”
The Times of London
Fluent in Mandarin, Gifford easily engages peasant farmers, entrepreneurs, students and officials whose pungent opinions inform his fascinating and exuberant journal. Travelling mostly by bus or taxi, he gives an intelligent, pragmatic appraisal of this vast country’s ethnic complexity. Treating the clash of tradition and modernity with wit and respect, Gifford’s insightful reportage makes no apology for Beijing’s more brutal doctrines. Instead, he concedes that, through massive cultural upheaval, “the possibility now exists to dream dreams that might actually be fulfilled.” Financial Times, London