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/>.
Gifford reports his third segment from Xinyang in Southern Hunn province, where as “the old securities have disappeared, and the new ones have not yet been set up.” As Communist power loosens, sex trade and religion emerge to fill the economic and ideological vacuums of “China’s hinterland.” In one of the countless Chinese karaoke bars, one “young ladies of the three [and for a price, four] accompaniments,” as the women who accompany those who drink, dance, and sing in karoke bars are known, Jiangmei charges $12 for an evening of accompaniment, $40 for a night, with one-third going to the pimp who runs the karaoke bar. Her family lost its work in the capitalist reforms to state-owned industries, and prostitution, “one of the social evils in the 1930s and 1940s,” is increasingly an answer to making ends meet in rural China’s turbulent transition. “The flip-side of the collapse of Communist morality,” reports Gifford, is the “explosion” of Christianity among those who have not “put all their faith in Route 312.” At the end of Gifford’s report, he is asked to preach the sermon by a group whose pastor has not shown up for their service.
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