CHINA ROAD

CH 1, THE
PROMISE LAND &
CH 2, DISLOCATION
By Rob Gifford
CH 1 & 2 OVERVIEW & OVERARCHING QUESTIONS:
➤ Introduction Synopsis - The Mother Road
➤ Gifford introduces the audience to his adventure - a road trip from the east coast of China, Shanghai, to the far western boarder
of China. The purpose is to answer the questions,
➤ Who are the Chinese? - Ethnic? National? Cultural?
➤ What are the major issues that modern China is facing?
➤ Will China be the next superpower?
➤ Ch 1 Synopsis - The Promised Land
➤ The Journey begins in Shanghai - modern, multicultural, & historical - “it is Manhattan in 1910” - internal immigrants who
come to seek their fortune. And there is a lot of fortune to be had! But it seems that those who do make it big are the ones who
have used some political coercion of some kind to achieve their wealth.
➤ Ch 2 Synopsis - Dislocation
➤ One of the biggest migrations in the world is happing in China today. It is an internal migration of rural peasants to the rapidly
expanding cities, especially along the southeastern side of China, where a lot of the factories are being built.
➤ The freedoms that the Chinese are experiencing are unprecedented, but are still very restrictive compared to countries like the
United States.
➤ The rapidly expanding freedom and change has dramatically influenced Chinese self-perception and their
➤ Overarching Questions:
➤ Will China be the next superpower?
➤ Is Democracy an important goal for China? Is Democracy in China even possible?
➤ How does consumerism influence a society?
➤ Based on Gifford’s point, “Not a Statue of Liberty,… A Statue of Prosperity”, do you believe that the United States deifies
the value of freedom over its value of prosperity?
➤ Do you think it is more important to have liberty or prosperity?
➤ Can you have one without the other?
INTRODUCTION - THEME OF POLITICAL OPPRESSION & PRAGMATISM
➤ “Like so many modern Chinese people, he is torn between a deep love
of his country and a deep anger at the people who govern it.” (pg. xvi)
➤ “‘No, I don’t think China can ever become a democracy,’ he says
without hesitation. ‘Look at China’s history. There have always been
Ganges in government, but it’s just the history of one emperor being
replaced by another.” (pg. xxi)

INTRODUCTION - THEME OF DIFFERENCES IN PERSPECTIVE

➤ “The Western world is still stuck in its dangerously outdated, black-
and-white view of the country (china)” (pg.xix)
➤ “‘China is weak,’ he says with a grimace, reflecting a widely held
view among Chinese people, at odds with the country’s emerging
image in the West.” (pg. xxi)
CH 1, THE PROMISE LAND - THEME OF HOPE
➤ “There is an intangible feel in Shanghai, an urgency, a hope
and optimism that hangs in the air all around you from the
minute you arrive.” (pg. 4)
➤ “The adoption of Communism and its final victory in 1949,
was about reclaiming Chinese land from the colonialists and
restoring China’s greatness. Now, more than a century and a
half later, that is finally starting to happen. (pg 13)
CH 1, THE PROMISE LAND - THEME OF THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’S SOUL
➤ “There is not Statue of Liberty to welcome them (migrants)
here,… but a Statue of Opportunity… not coming from an old
world to build a new but trying to turn the old world into a
new one, and that is a much harder task.” (pg.7-8)
➤ “So much of what China is today is linked to its need to wipe
out the humiliation of those years, most especially the
humiliation at the hands of the British.” (pg 11)
CH 1, THE PROMISE LAND - THEME OF DIFFERENCES IN PERSPECTIVE
➤ The Westerners are… trying to re-create the past… The Chinese…
are trying to escape the past. (pg. 8) (Shanghai’s colonial past)
➤ “Even though we poisoned them with opium, stole their land,
carved up their country, patronized, humiliated, and half-enslaved
them, Old Hundred Names, the ordinary Chinese people, are
astonishingly courteous and accommodating to foreigners, yes,
even the British.” (pg 11)
➤ “Shanghai grew up in the image of a Western city. Its name in the
Western mind reeked of the opportunities and excesses, the
sensuousness and mystery of the East. In the Chinese mind, by
contrast, Shanghai bore the stench of humiliation and
contamination by the West.” (pg 13)
CH 2, DISLOCATION - THEME OF HOPE
➤ “China is at peace. For the first half of the twentieth century, it
was in chaos - collapsing internally and being devoured by fierce
colonial wolves… in 1949,.. the country set about devouring
itself… now though, the watchwords of the Communist Party
are peace internationally and stability domestically… provides
an environment in which many can prosper.” (pg. 15)
➤ “China has lifted 400 million people out of poverty since
1978.” (pg. 17)
➤ “We cannot deny that there is more choice in China now than
there used to be… where there is choice, there is often change
for the better… the possibility of political change.” (pg 18)
CH 2, DISLOCATION - THEME OF RAPID CHANGE
➤ “The speed of the changes has left psychological and spiritual
confusion in many people’s minds… Untethered from both Confucian
and Communist morality” (pg. 19)

CH 2, DISLOCATION - THEME OF POLITICAL OPPRESSION & PRAGMATISM

➤ “After the killing of the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the
Communist Party leaders made an unwritten, unspoken deal with the
people of China: stay out of politics, and you can do anything you want….
For the first time in more than… four thousand years, the Chinese
government began to retreat from people’s everyday lives.” (pg. 15)
➤ The tiny birdcage in which Chinese people had previously lived became an
aviary. (pg. 15)
➤ “China’s prosperity today is just a patina of wealth, accessible mainly to
the corrupt and the very fortunate at the top, which disguises a seething
mass of urban social problems, such as unemployment, crime, and
outdated housing…” (pg. 15)
CH 2, DISLOCATION - THEME OF DIFFERENCES IN PERSPECTIVE
➤ “If in the United States you need money to get power, in China you need power to get
money.” (pg. 15)
➤ “Everyone watches Western TV programs, like Friends, like Desperate Housewives, and we’re
totally aware of how people live in the West.” (pg 26)
➤ “I’ve been disgusted at the way the Communist Party treats its people, and shocked at the
sheer cost of it all, the human cost, which seems acceptable to the government in everything
that it does.” (pg 17)

CH 2, DISLOCATION - THEME OF THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’S SOUL

➤ “Many people now believe that, if there’s no law against it, then it’s all right. To many
in the cities… morality - a sense of right and wrong - doesn't matter anymore.” (pg. 20)

➤ “Having struggled for a century to escape the straitjacket of family ties and social
obligations, young people in CHina’s cities are now foundering in the isolation of
individualism.” (pg. 20)

➤ “No one knows how to be a person anymore. We are training technicians. We are not
training people.” (pg. 20)

➤ “I’m no t lost… I don’t believe in Jesus or Buddha, but I believe in self-struggle, an

effort to improve myself and my country. You don’t have to have faith to have a
meaningful life. ” (pg. 26)