A Letter from China

Rob Gifford是美国国家电台驻中国的记者。六年来，他行走在全中国，从北朝鲜的边境一直到西北部的穆斯林地区，Rob Gifford以一位职业的视角真实地报道了生活在巨大经济和文化变革中的中国人民的生活。此次，他接受NPR著名的谈话节目Talk of the Nation的采访。

President Bush opened his four-nation tour of Asia with provocative word（1） aimed at China. The president made his remarks after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in Kyoto. The president encouraged China to continue down the road to reform, saying Chinese leaders should meet the, quote, "legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness." He went on to praise Taiwan for creating a free and democratic Chinese society, words seen as a direct challenge to Chinese leaders who consider Taiwan to be part of China. President Bush is now in South Korea where he'll meet with Asian leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative Summit. He heads to China and Mongolia this weekend.

Today, we talk with NPR correspondent Rob Gifford for the latest installment in our continuing series on China in the 21st century. Rob first went to China as a 20-year-old student in 1987. He reported on China for NPR from 1999 until September. During the six years, he covered China, Gifford took listeners from the fast-moving rapidly changing streets of Shanghei to the remote edges of the Gobi Desert. This hour, we'll look back at those six years of tumultuous change in China and what it's meant for the people who live there. If you have a question for Rob Gifford or have seen changes in China yourself, give us a call. Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.

Rob Gifford joins us now from member station WDET in Detroit, Michigan. Thanks so much for being with us, Rob. Good to have you.

ROB GIFFORD (NPR's China Correspondent For Six Years): Thanks for having me, Lynn. It's good to be here.

NEARY: Let's start off with the news of the day. First of all, what did you make of the president's comments about China and Taiwan?

GIFFORD: Well, certainly, as you say, the Chinese government will see this as very provocative, but I think they are probably going to play it down. Really, they don't like being lectured by the United States, but I think the relationship with the US is too important and there have been too many benefits that the Chinese have gained in the post-9/11 world to really stir up too much trouble over these comments from President Bush. But in the long run, certainly, it will just add to their unease about US support for Taiwan, their fear that the US could be in future supporting some kind of independent Taiwan, but in the short term I think they will look to get on as best they can with the US president when he visits this weekend.

NEARY: Well, the Chinese foreign minister already did react. He said, basically, `Well, that's fine. We can talk about the Taiwan problem with the US.' But the US must recognize Taiwan is part of China, which I guess is a fairly predictable response from Chinese leaders, but it makes me wonder if this was really the best way for the president to get off to a good start, I guess, in meeting with Chinese leaders, or they're just beginning with an impasse.

GIFFORD: Right, well, I think, obviously, President Bush has made this push for freedom around the globe very much part of his global foreign policy, and so it's been--we've seen it in the Middle East, and we've seen it before in Asia, and we've seen it from other officials in the Bush administration. I think one of the problems is, though, that over the last couple of years, especially with the situation in Iraq, and especially with the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib （阿布格莱布监狱） and some of these instances, in the eyes of the Chinese, whatever moral high ground that the US might have had, has been very much eroded, and I think the Chinese now feel that they will not be lectured. I mean, they felt it really before, but that's really been heightened by what has happened in Iraq. They felt the whole situation, the invasion there, was illegitimate and they see the human rights abuses and the problems that have arisen for the US government there as very, very large, indeed, and that the US is in no position to lecture China about human rights and about democracy.

NEARY: Now, Rob, among the issues that's going to be discussed at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit is the danger of avian flu（禽流感）. And you covered the SARS outbreak in China and at that time China was not very forthcoming about the situation. What about now? Do you think that China learned its lesson from that experience and will be more forthcoming now, or will it be a repeat, possibly?

GIFFORD: I think they learned a huge lesson from SARS and the problem is, though, the people who learned the lesson are the people in the central government, and I have to say for all the problems that China has, and for all the intransigent old-style Communist Party aparatchiks that still exist in Beijing, there are--there is a new generation of people there in their 30s and 40s who really do want to address some of these problems, not just avian flu but many problems, and they are really trying to implement a kind of transparency. They are aware of the massive dangers of avian flu. The problem is, as it always has been throughout Chinese history, the curse of Chinese civilization is the local official. It's often not a problem in Beijing. It's the problem in the provinces and implementing this transparency. You've had officials who their just automatic reaction is to cover up, to cover up. They don't want to look bad. They don't want things to happen on their turf, on their watch. And so trying to get the lower level officials to go along with this greater transparency is really one of the biggest problems that the central government faces.

NEARY: What about China's relations with its Asian neighbors? I understand there's a growing anti-Japanese sentiment in China, for example, and, of course, there's a long history there. Why would that be re-emerging, or is it re-emerging, or is it simply becoming more obvious as China opens up?

GIFFORD: I think it's definitely emerging. We saw it in the spring with the anti-Japanese demonstrations in many Chinese cities. I think one of the reasons for it, really, is the demise of communism. No one really believes in communism anymore. It's--of course, China is still a one-party state. It can still be very much a police state when it wants to be, but, economically, it's moved away from communism, and, ideologically, it's moved away from it. No one believes in it anymore.

What's going to replace it? Well, the big thing that seems to be emerging is this nationalism, this idea of `we, the Chinese people,' `we, this great civilization; we will not be pushed around anymore. We were pushed around. We don't think Japan apologized enough, has apologized enough for the sins of the past, of World War II,' and there is a fear, a paranoia in China that the right-wing in Japan is re-emerging as symbolized by Mr. Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine（靖国神社） in Tokyo. So I think there's still a lot of raw wounds from World War II that were--sort of been opened up again, and it's partly because of the domestic situation in China itself, and partly because of the actions of the Japanese government.

NEARY: We're talking about China with NPR's Rob Gifford who spent six years reporting on China for NPR. If you'd like to join our discussion, give us a call. The number's (800) 989-8255. And, of course, you can send us an e-mail to totn@npr.org. And we're going to take a call now from Ginger in San Francisco.  Hi, Ginger.

GINGER (Caller): Hi.

NEARY: Go ahead.

GINGER: Well, I just returned with my husband from China. Actually, we were there on business but then extended our trip for pleasure, but we took an independent trip, which meant we were with individual guides in various places throughout China and Tibet, and the observation I made was that while these are normally educated people, they speak English very well, the people who were under--who were 25 or under, still revered Mao, and, in fact, were very proud of their Communist heritage vs. tour guides that we met. And we would spend possibly two, three days with each of these people so we really had a very, I think, good insight, but the tour guides we met who were over 35, who, for instance, might have read a copy dropped off by a tourist of "Wild Swans," said the book was very authentic and true and they were--had a much different perspective so I'd like to hear Mr. Gifford's comments on that.

NEARY: "Wild Swans," of course, is a book written about the cultural revolution of--from the perspective of three generations of women, we should mention that, for people who don't know the book.

GINGER: Yes.

NEARY: Rob?

GIFFORD: That's right. Well, I would say there's a fairly simple answer to that, and that is the older generation, the generation over 40, experienced the cultural revolution. They experienced Maoism. So anybody who experienced the cultural revolution will know that Maoism was not a wonderful time for China. It--anyone who went through that, if you're--many people, millions of people, had their lives destroyed by it. And I think the younger generation, the people who've grown up in the '80s and '90s, they are not told in the history books about how bad it was. And so Mao is seen as this sort of icon of--he--of course, on October 1st, 1949, he stood on Tiananmen and he said, `The Chinese people have stood up,' and those moments are told in the history books, and what Mao did to kick out the imperialists,

to reunite the country that had collapsed after the last emperor stepped down in 1911, those--I mean, even as a Westerner, those things you can admire, those things that he did. The problem was what happened afterward, and the younger generation simply don't know about that because they're not taught about it because it was so unbelievably dreadful.

NEARY: All right. Thanks for your call, Ginger.

GINGER: Thank you.

NEARY: And interestingly, Rob, the author of "Wild Swans" has just come out with a new book on Mao, which is really pretty scathingly critical of Mao and everything he did in China.

GIFFORD: That's right. I mean, it--he--we knew he was a monster in many ways. I mean, he presided over the deaths of 30 million people during the Great Leap Forward（大跃进）. This book is--was 10 years in the making. It was saying he's even more of a monster than we thought before, but Chinese people do not--I have to say even those people, the older people that your caller was just talking about, they may have suffered but they do--even they have some--many of them have some admiration for him because China was so humiliated. It was sort of semi-colonized between the 1840s and the 1940s and so there is a sort of grudging respect, I think, for him that we, really, in the West, we don't have. We see the deaths and we say, `How on Earth could anybody respect this man?'

NEARY: Rob, we want to get into some of your personal memories of China, some of the reporting that you did on China during the six years you were there. We're going to get into that when we return from a short break. And we'll be taking your calls. Give us a call at (800) 989-8255 if you'd like to join the conversation. Or send us an e-mail. The address is totn@npr.org. I'm Lynn Neary. it's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

NEARY: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary, sitting in for Neal Conan. We're talking about the rapid social economic and technological changes that are taking place in China. My guest is NPR's Rob Gifford, who witnessed much of this change during his six years covering China. And, of course, you are invited to join our discussion. Give us a call at (800) 989-TALK, or send us an e-mail to totn@npr.org.

Now, Rob, let's get into your own experiences with China as an old China hand. You went there first in 1987, and I have to tell you that I've been to China a couple of times, too. I was there even before you in '84. But I'd love to hear what your impressions were. Tell us what China was like back then, because it's almost impossible, I think, for people to understand what it was like just, you know, less than 20 years ago compared to what it is now.

GIFFORD: Yes, well, you will remember, Lynn, that it was a completely different world. There weren't hardly any cars on the street, there was still ration coupons, people--you had to have these little tickets to buy stuff. You couldn't just walk into a store and buy a loaf of bread. People were--when I was there, actually, in '87, it was getting to be relatively open. People, politically, were starting to discuss where China could go. It was the period of Zhao Ziyang, the great reformist premier, who was purged at Tiananmen in '89 so--but certainly the landscape was completely different, and I think the mentality （思维方式）of the people was different, and really those are the two things that you see absolutely transformed now. In the cities, there are new buildings everywhere. Beijing, of course, is staging the Olympics. Shanghei is just an unbelievable city. I think of it rather like Manhattan in about 1905, 100 years ago. It's just booming. It's jumping. And this has been a complete transformation in just 20 years.

NEARY: You know, I can remember being in Beijing and being in Shanghei in 1984, and I returned to Shanghei in '96, but in 1984, I can remember being in one of those big new Western hotels and looking out on Beijing and not seeing any lights on, virtually, in the city.

GIFFORD: That's right. Yeah.

NEARY: How do you explain how you go from that in 1984 to what's happening now in 2005? Really? I--is there any way you can briefly explain to us what happened?

GIFFORD: I think it is a realization that they completely wasted 30 years. I think that is a part of it. And it's not just 30 years of wasted time making revolution under Mao, actually. It's playing catchup for 150 years, for 200 years, going back to 793 when the first British envoy arrived at the court of the Qian Long emperor. You know? And then the British gunboats arrived, and the Chinese suddenly realized `Wow! We're not the most civilized technologically advanced country on the planet. We're not the middle kingdom. We're not the most important culture.' These guys, these hairy barbarians, are ahead of us. And ever since then it's all been about playing catchup, and for so long until 1978 they didn't get the recipe right. ,

They just kept getting it wrong and they kept not being able to reform, and then finally when Mao died, there was just this realization, `OK, we've got a united country, we've got--Deng Xiaoping was at the helm. Let's just go for it. We need to develop this wealth and this power that we've always wanted and we've got to play catchup. We will not be humiliated by the West ever again or by Japan,' and it's deep in China--inside the Chinese psyche that they will not be humiliated, and I think that is the driving force behind so much of this energy now that is pouring out into the Chinese economy and into the Chinese society.

NEARY: I have to ask you a question that's come in on an e-mail from Mark in Buffalo. He says, `I am fairly well-read on world affairs, China, etc. But what are we to believe about China? Are they an extreme military and economic threat and not to be trusted, or should we be more trusting and extend an olive branch（橄榄枝）?'

GIFFORD: Wow. This is the great dilemma（两难境地）, obviously, for President Bush, for his successor, for the whole Western world, and it's very difficult to know. It's very difficult to know. Look at every nation throughout history, look at the neighbor of China. Look at Japan, how it rose. Look what it did when it rose. Look at what it did when it industrialized. It invaded the whole of Asia. Now the Chinese will just tell you a million times that they will never, ever, ever, ever do that because they've suffered from it. And I think that there is some truth in that. They know what it's like to be occupied and to be at the wrong end of the stick.

But there are issues, and, of course, Taiwan, that President Bush talked about today, is one of the major ones in which, you know, everyone just has a different viewpoint. The Chinese see that it is theirs, and so they may well be aggressive over Taiwan, and that will be seen as aggression toward the outside world whereas for the Chinese, that's not aggression, that's just restoring what is rightfully theirs. I think we've probably--I've hedged my bets in my answer. I think we've got a long way to go before we actually really have to answer that question but I think--I'm not convinced it's gonna be a smooth ride. Not just because of the Chinese view themselves of what they do, but because of the perception on the outside of what the Chinese are trying to do. You know, perception is as important as reality, and if the Taiwan situation blows up, I think the outside world could respond, regardless of what China's aims are. The outside world, especially, the US, could respond in a way that could lead to problems.

NEARY: One of the many mysteries about China, I think, to people in the West. But one of the things I think people can't quite grasp and it's hard to grasp is `How do you--How are you a Communist state and a gigantic capitalist power at the same time?' And it seems to be that without that strange mix, the country couldn't be doing what it's doing now.

GIFFORD: Right. I think you're exactly right. I mean--and the classic comparison is India, of course, which is a democracy, but which cannot force through these economic policies. I mean, if you're a one-party state, then you can force through terrible, terrible policies. They had some 30 years of it. But if you're a one-party state and you actually have quite good economic policies, well, you can push those through, as well, with a vigor that a multiparty state probably cannot do. I think it's important to say that for the Chinese people, they're not really too bothered about labels and names. I mean, the Chinese themselves call it `socialism with Chinese characteristics.' But really, I think, Westerners get more hung up on the names than the Chinese themselves do. `Hey, if it works,' they say, `if I'm better off than I used to be, then I don't care what it's called.'

NEARY: But, certainly, it's not working for everyone. I mean, there's huge prosperity...

GIFFORD: That's absolutely true.

NEARY: ...in the cities, but, in the rural areas, not so much prosperity.

GIFFORD: Well, recently, that is true. For the first 20 years after the reforms started in '78, the rural areas did get much better. Now they have stagnated. And what we are seeing now, which is very dangerous for the Communist Party, is the start or--the start of a period of real rural unrest. There was 74,000 incidents of unrest across China last year. That's the Chinese government's own figures. And that shows that the rural economy is stagnating, taxes have been too high, they're seeing that--the corruption of the party officials as they make money and the peasants cannot so this is gonna be the huge challenge, I think, over the next five to 10 years, to raise the standard of living of those peasants.

NEARY: All right. We are talking about China with NPR's Rob Gifford who reported from China for six years. We're taking your calls at (800) 989-8255. And let's go to Mike. He's in Dayton, Ohio.

Hi, Mike.

MIKE (Caller): Yes. Had a question--we were--we spent a year in China, my wife and I did, teaching English back when Deng Xiaoping died. And I noticed that day-to-day activities, everybody seemed to be just engaged in what was going on, pretty carefree, but there seemed to be some threshold where, if they crossed the line, that they were--that fear of authority was always just under the surface. And people would get very somber, crowds would disperse at an accident if--as soon as the police got there. Kids on the playground would climb down off the statues when the police came (technical difficulties).

(Soundbite of report)

GIFFORD: Grandiose statements of individual empowerment ...(unintelligible) Jung Chao June(ph). As for most individuals...

MIKE: Hello?

NEARY: I'm sorry. We got--we were interrupted, I think, by a technical problem there.

MIKE: OK.

NEARY: Go ahead. I'm sorry.

MIKE: I'm curious if you noticed a continuing underlying fear of authority, a sense of--we're having--our daily lives are fine but if we cross a line, suddenly we're in fear of the police or the army, in particular. I saw that years ago when we were there.

GIFFORD: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. You--there is a threshold and I think what has happened in the post-Tiananmen Square era, since 1989, is that the government of China has basically done an unspoken deal with the people of China, that if you want to--as long as you stay out of politics, you can do anything you want, socially, economically, you can go into business, you can go abroad, you can become whatever you want. Become a prostitute, if you want. We don't really get too involved in the daily life. But you must stay out of politics. So everyone goes about their daily life and they have this space to live now, which they never had before, but there is a threshold, there is a ceiling that you just can't go beyond. And as soon as it starts to become political, or seem to become political, you will get clamped down on. I mean, I often say China is not the same police state that it used to be.

 But it still can be a police state when it wants to be. I mean, look at Falun Gong, for instance, the spiritual movement, that was perceived as a challenge to the government. They squashed that really, really toughly, and they didn't have any problems in squashing it. So I think it's absolutely true that politically you--there is still--they're still very tough and you cannot confront the Communist Party.

NEARY: All right. Thanks so much for your call, Mike.

MIKE: Yes.

NEARY: And also, Rob, you know, as the country improves economically, as people's lives improve, doesn't that often bring with it a desire for greater personal freedom and liberty and democracy?

GIFFORD: Absolutely. I think it does. And I often describe this as my pizza-topping theory of Chinese political change. Once you compare a choose-your-own pizza toppings, which young Chinese are increasingly doing, sooner or later you are gonna want to choose your own political leaders, and I--it's not necessarily an overnight change, but just getting the concept of choice in your life--I mean, no one's ever had a choice before. No one's ever been able to decide where they work, decide who they marry. Everything was managed before the last decade or so. And so now, once you have those freedoms, you can move about, you can move jobs, you can go abroad. Slowly, as we've seen in Taiwan and South Korea, and other countries, the new middle class does start to demand more political rights. And this to some extent was what President Bush was talking about today, and, to some extent, he's right. The question is now: When might that come in China, and what will the government do when those demands start to appear?

NEARY: We're talking with NPR's Rob Gifford about the years he spent covering China for NPR. We're talking your calls at (800) 989-8255.

And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

We got an e-mail here for you, Rob. `I have loved hearing Rob over the past six years. My question for him is: What did people think about what they were producing for us? What did people think there--think about what they were producing for us, that is those of us living in the US? I mean, what did they think when they made a million SpongeBob toothbrushes, for example?'

GIFFORD: Yeah, I think they think, `Well, crazy Westerners, you know. Who wants a SpongeBob toothbrush?' I mean, there's all sorts of funny stories about the bizarre

things--you know, these little factories in the middle of nowhere making, you know, tiny little widgets for some niche Western market. But I don't think--actually, I don't think the Chinese people think too much about that. They are thinking, `I am a peasant. I used to earn a hundred dollars a year planting rice. I now get a hundred dollars a month making SpongeBob toothbrushes for the US market and that does me fine. I am much better off than I was, and the American people can brush their teeth with whatever they want. It's helping me to lift myself out of desperate rural poverty.'

NEARY: Here's another e-mail. `I've always wanted to know how fluent Rob Gifford is in Chinese and what dialect. His pronunciation always seems authentic.' And we do want to play a little piece of tape here of you so that people can hear your Chinese before we go to that question.

GIFFORD: Uh-oh.

NEARY: And it also brings up another subject. This is some tape from a piece you filed when you were traveling Route 312 back in August during your two-week trip across China, and it's at a church service. Let's hear that tape.

(Soundbite of tape)

GIFFORD: The service was supposed to start at 10:30, and the pastor is not here.

(Chinese spoken)

Unidentified Woman #1: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: OK. So the people in the church are sitting, waiting for the service and they've asked me if I will preach the sermon. This is not something I was expecting when I arrived.

(Chinese spoken)

Unidentified Woman #1: (Chinese spoken)

Unidentified Woman #2: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: OK. Here's an 83-year-old lady who is asking me to preach the sermon.

Unidentified Woman #2: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: (Chinese spoken)

I'm trying to explain that this isn't really something I'm used to doing.

Unidentified Woman #2: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: (Chinese spoken)

Unidentified Woman #2: (Chinese spoken)

GIFFORD: I don't think I'm going to be allowed to leave unless I preach the sermon. Not a situation I've ever been in before. OK, where's my Bible?

(Soundbite of laughter)

NEARY: Did you preach that sermon, Rob?

GIFFORD: I did preach the sermon, yes. It was--I mean, that--reporting from China, honestly, it's just the greatest job. I mean, you just--stuff like that just lands in your lap. You got your tape recorder rolling and someone asks you to preach a sermon in Chinese. I mean, for goodness sake. So it's just--stuff like that just happens. And when you've got this sort of revolution going on, this social and economic revolution going on, you know, stuff just happens. You can just walk down the street and find two or three really interesting feature stories.

To answer the question of language, though, it is Mandarin Chinese, which is the standard Chinese dialect which is taught to students of Chinese when they go to China. There are, of course, many, many dialects all across the country. One of the good things that the Communist Party did was to standardize it, also. Everyone is taught in Mandarin all over the country and can now converse with each other. In the past, they used to have to converse on paper by writing the characters because the dialects were so dissimilar.

NEARY: So you could travel around China at this point with Mandarin and really make yourself known pretty much throughout the country?

GIFFORD: Absolutely, yes. Very much so. And that's what I used to do. I used to just, you know, get on a plane and travel around China. You can just, you know, walk up in some village and talk to the people.

NEARY: Well, we're going to take a short break now and then more of your questions about China with Rob Gifford.

And then we're going to tell you a story about the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has set a goal of December 1st to get all hurricane evacuees out of hotels and into alternative housing. We'll take that up after a short break.

I'm Lynn Neary. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Announcements)

NEARY: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Lynn Neary in Washington, sitting in for Neal Conan.

Here are some of the stories we're following at NPR News today. House and Senate negotiators have struck a tentative agreement to extend the Patriot Act. It's currently set to expire at the end of the year. The deal would require the Justice Department to more fully report its requests for information about ordinary people.

And in Iraq today, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has aligned himself with the parties that control the current US-supported government. Sadr supporters fought against US and Iraqi government forces last year. You can hear details of those stories and more later today on "All Things Considered" from NPR News.

Right now NPR's Rob Gifford is still with us, and we are talking about change in China. Join the conversation. Call us at (800) 989-TALK, or send us an e-mail to totn@npr.org.

And let's take a call now from Peter in Buffalo, New York. Hi, Peter.

PETER (Caller): Hello.

NEARY: Go ahead.

 PETER: Yes. About eight years ago, I was in China, took a cruise from Hong Kong to Beijing, and a common concern was, because of the one-child-per-family policy, that there was going to be a whole generation of spoiled children because each child had a set of parents and four grandparents and this child is getting more attention, more material goods than prior generations. And is that being looked at? Here, you're going to have people, well, probably in another five to 10 years becoming adults and having a consumer attitude of who knows how much more than prior generations.

NEARY: All right, let...

PETER: What was there--the roads were there, but the cars weren't. And it wasn't romantic to drive ...(unintelligible). They all want vehicles. And if they have the three vehicles per family like we have in the States, that's going to put quite a demand on resources, I would think.

NEARY: Thanks for that question, Peter. I'm going to let Rob answer that for you. Thanks so much...

GIFFORD: Yes. I think we're already seeing that the one-child policy, the people who grow up as only children--they're called the little emperors--and certainly they are very spoiled. There is actually a theory out there that these are the people who are going to usher in the era of democracy in China because they're never turned down; they always get what they want. They demand stuff from their parents and their grandparents and they always get it. But there is other...

NEARY: Like the baby boomers here in the United States who get what--who always get what they want?

GIFFORD: Yeah, maybe. There's one other element of that whole one-child policy that's really coming out now. As those people get to marriage age--it's 25 years ago that that was started--that's the lack of women. There's a real shortage of women because a lot of the female fetuses were aborted in the early '80s when people wanted a boy, if they were only allowed one. And that, I think, is going to be a major social problem over the next few years.

NEARY: And, of course, there's a huge number of adoptions from China. I myself have a little girl that I adopted from China.

GIFFORD: Wow.

NEARY: This is the place that so many people go now.

GIFFORD: Absolutely.

NEARY: And people are very aware of the fact that that could become a problem as it goes along in China.

GIFFORD: Sure, it's still a problem. Yeah.

NEARY: You know, inherent in that question of Peter's also was the fact that--he talked about the consumerism. And what happens in a society like China's where, as I said, you know, some 20 years ago, there were no lights, there were only bicycles. What happens when consumerism takes over a society in that way?

GIFFORD: Well, this is a major issue, and this is one of the issues I'm going into in my book. I'm taking a few months off to write a book about my experiences in China. And I go into this in some depth, which is--well, a lot of it comes back to the sort of vacuum. I mean, if you're talking very almost spiritually about this, you see consumerism, but that's all that people have. It's like, `What do people believe in? Well, they just believe only in consumerism because the old beliefs were wiped out by the Communists and now no one believes in communism. So what have you got left? You've got, `Well, earn as much money as possible in any way possible and then go and spend it as fast as possible to show your neighbors how wealthy you are.'

And I think the Chinese people--many Chinese people, are now catching hold of this and getting hold of the fact that, `Well, you know, what? Having extra handbags and cars doesn't actually give me deep-down happiness.' I mean, of course, it's better than not having them, but I think there's now this sort of moral spiritual quest to find something than consumerism, something to rediscover some spiritual roots, if you like, to look into other things that will make life more meaningful than just being able to buy new stuff that you could never buy before.

NEARY: And could that quest also take them into direct conflict with the Communist powers there, the Communist leaders there?

GIFFORD: Well, it could. I mean, you heard me preaching that sermon in the church. I mean, the emergence of Christianity is a major issue. And religious freedom--there are more freedoms now, but there are many people who don't want to fit in to the government-run churches. The Communist Party is trying desperately to control everything in a very 1950s kind of way, but you've got a very 21st-century society emerging which simply won't be squeezed back into the bottle, if you like, out of which that it's been let out of.

NEARY: Rob, thanks so much for joining us today. It was fascinating talking to you.

And just one last question: What are you going to miss the most about China? You're going to London now to cover for NPR. What are you going to miss about those years you spent in China?

GIFFORD: Oh, wow, what a difficult question. I should have an answer for that. I think I'll just miss waking up every morning and thinking, `Wow, what's going to happen today? Am I going to be asked to preach a sermon in a church just when I walk down the street, or am I going to be coming across, you know, any number of amazing, amazing things?' But I have to say after six years of that, it is one wonderful and you do look forward to every day, but it can kind of grind you down a little bit, hence, my needing to take a break from it. And who knows? I imagine I'll be back there.

NEARY: All right. Thanks so much for joining us, Rob.

GIFFORD: Thank you very much for having me, Lynn.

NEARY: Rob Gifford was NPR's China correspondent for six years. He is writing a book right now about his experiences in China. And in January, he will become NPR's London correspondent. He joined us from member station WDET in Detroit, Michigan.

You can hear all of Rob's stories at our Web site, npr.org, where you will also find photos and maps from his reports.

(Soundbite of tape)

GIFFORD: Well, I should've known that any Westerner walks into a karaoke bar in China, of course, he has to sing. So this is too surreal. With apologies to Don Henley and The Eagles, this is Rob Gifford in a karaoke bar on Route 312 in eastern China.

(Soundbite of "Desperado")