Rob Gifford likens the newly constructed Route 312 in China to our own legendary Route 66. The NPR correspondent has a new book titled China Road: Journey into the Future of a Rising Power. I caught a few segments of the NPR series about his 14 day trek across 300 miles of China from east to west. When I heard he was publishing his trek in a book it was vaulted to the top of my must-read list. My reading list is long but books about China, Adoption, China Adoption etc. always end up on the fast track to the top even before the books I help publish! Understandable, right? Don't tell my partners.
The book contains behind-the-curtain type insight into a 2 thousand-year-old civilization that is quickly sacrificing it's eastern mystique that has been incubated by their unique geographical location for a western-type capitalism. In order to regain it's place as a great nation it moves westward mirrored by Rob Gifford's trek from Shanghai to the Kazakstan border. It seems so strange that as our nation reaches for all things Eastern in design, tradition and spirituality, as we as a people are obsessed with history and spirituality, China is racing away from their rich culture and tradition to the dog-eat-dog corporate colonialism that is consuming the US. The grass is always greener, ain't it?
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