China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been reading quite a few books on China, as I am fascinated with and intruiged by the country's amazing economic transformation, and the potential consequences elsewhere in the world, including here in the US. (Among the better ones are China Shakes the World by James Kygny as well as The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith). If you listen regularly to NPR Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Rob Gifford will be a familiar voice.
In "China Road: A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power" (344 pages), Gifford, who has had a lifelong fascination with China and speaks Mandarin fluently, takes us on a journey across China on Road 312, the Chinese equivalent of our Route 66. Starting in Shanghai and working his way west, Gifford meets ordinary and not-so-ordinary Chinese and simply lets them do the talking. It makes for compelling reading. Talking to a well-known radio talk-show host in Shanghai, the host remarks that "morality--a sense of what's right and wrong--doesn't matter anymore".
At some point in his journey Gifford runs into a man holding a big sign that reads ANTICORRUPTION JOURNEY ACROSS CHINA. The man tells Gifford that "You see, in the West, people have a moral standard that is inside them. It is built into them. Chinese people do not have that moral standard within them. If there is nothing external stopping them, they just do whatever they want for themselves, regardless of right and wrong".
When Gifford runs into an Indian national, he hopes to have a discussion about how things are evolving in India versus in China, but the man is not interested in having the discussion. Gifford then dryly writes "So in the end, I have the conversation with myself over dinner and I conclude that I don't want to be a Chinese peasant OR an Indian peasant. But if I have to take a side, despite all the massive problems of rural China, I'll go for the sweet and sour pork over the chicken biryani any day of the week". Gifford spends a fair amount of time giving thought whether China can ever become a real democracy. Looking back at the 13th century, Gifford writes "There are many ways in which China was far head of Europe, in terms of technological development and prosperity. But for some reason, their system never developed any real checks on state power, and since in the West these checks did emerge, it has become a real contention between the two sides".
I could go on giving more quotes from the book, but suffice it to say that Gifford brings story upon story, and observation upon observation about China the culture, the people, the country, just superb. I was in China earlier this year and happen to be in a number of the cities that Gifford talks about in the book, in particular Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and Xi'an, and this book brought back some great memories. This book is not just a "travelogue", but instead a wonderful mix of facts and observations. Highly recommended for anyone interested in China!

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Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia (Food Culture around the World) Review

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(More customer reviews)I enjoy reading about food and food culture from all over the world and so the title of this book appealed to me. Unfortunately, the content did not. I was rather expecting the sort of book I usually enjoy which is essentially an illustrated cookery book with a lot of supplementary material about the cuisine in question. This book, however, while it did contain a handful of recipes near the very end, read more like a master's thesis on the culture, economics, and history of Russia and Central Asia (albeit with a particular slant towards the general regional eating habits). It was, in consequence, rather dry and not very enjoyable. To be fair to the authors, of course, my disappointment stemmed primarily from my misguided expectations rather than the merits of the content but, again to be fair from an alternative perspective, I rather feel that I would also have been disappointed had I instead been looking for a more erudite and in depth look at the `food culture' of the region. This book contains only 260 pages so to attempt such a vast and complex topic in so little space inevitably means that each aspect of the subject is given short shrift indeed. Some may find this book useful but it did not interest me very much.


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