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/>.
As Gifford hitches a ride with a truck driver in his sixth segment, Li Yuchang describes his views on what the trade of agricultural products eastward and industrial machinery westward along 312 have come to mean for China. Li, “like many ordinary Chinese…shows a keen knowledge of political issues and the need for reform in China,” and feels torn between “a deep love for his country and a deep anger at the corruption that plagues it.” Li advocates a multiparty system as a necessary check on government corruption and control, and observes that the economic development he sees everywhere doesn’t necessarily lead to political change: “the system never changes…just the people at the top.” In a climate where “man eats man,” Li feels nostalgic for “a poor but honest” past, and Gifford waxes a bit nostalgic himself as he exits the truck, stating that “sometimes you learn much more about modern China from an uneducated rural truck driver than from any number of professors in Beijing.” Further along the road, Gifford encounters five young men who have taken a month to bike across the Gobi Desert in their Brazil soccer shirts – symbolic, comments Gifford, of a new Chinese youth that will just “get out on the road.” At the end of his report, Gifford shares some of Willy Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” with his taxi driver.