In 2004, NPR correspondent Rob Gifford went “On the Road in China,” traveling 3000 miles from Shanghai to Korgaz along China’s Route 312 through Nanjing, Hefei, Xinyang, Xian, Lanzhou, Jiayuguan, and Urumi over 14 days. His seven-part report is available at <http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2004/aug/china_road/>.
Part One of his report covers Shanghai, “the boomtown of Asia,” and “a magnet for China’s growing army of yuppies,” where cars have displaced bicycles, as well as for “another army…the rural poor,” who come to work in Shanghai’s thousands of factories “that supply the world with everything.” Gifford compares his visit to a textile factory to “a scene from a Dickens novel…the industrial revolution come to China.” Migration is central to this industrial boom: Gifford interviews Li Hongying (sp), who has traveled more than a thousand miles from her inland home to work 12 hour shifts, earning 5 times what she would at home, and sending the money back to support her family and her brother’s education. Gifford also discusses “the millions who never make it to the promised land of Shanghai.”
Gifford also discusses the enormous Route 312, comparing it to America’s Route 66 with the caveat that “Route 312 is mostly about feeding oneself…in China…there is no time for the post-modern luxury of self-discovery.” However, things are changing, and Gifford makes the first leg of his trip “West…against the grain” with four-wheeling members of Shanghai’s new middle class, including an advertising executive known to his friends as “Tin-tin,” who makes some sixty times what the migrant factory workers pull in. At the end of his report, Gifford finds himself singing The Eagles “Desperado” in a karaoke bar crammed with factory workers west of Shanghai, where “any Westerner who walks in…of course has to sing…”