Rob Gifford
Rob Gifford is the NPR foreign correspondent based in Shanghai.
For five years prior to his assignment in Shanghai in 2010, Gifford reported from NPR's London Bureau. From 1999 to 2005, he was NPR's Beijing correspondent.
Gifford has reported from around the world for NPR, especially in Asia and Europe. Two days after the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, Gifford flew to Pakistan for the first of many reporting trips to the Muslim world.
Born and raised in the UK, Gifford worked for three years at the BBC World Service, before moving to the US in 1994 to attend graduate school. He also spent two years at NPR member station WGBH in Boston.
His first book, CHINA ROAD: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power was published in 2007 by Random House. CHINA ROAD tells of his 3,000 mile odyssey across China, following the country's equivalent of the US Route 66--called Route 312--all the way from Shanghai to the Kazakh border. The book is based upon a seven-part radio series that Gifford filed for Morning Edition.
Gifford holds a BA in Chinese Studies from Durham University, UK, and an MA in Regional Studies (East Asia) from Harvard University.
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Some good news has been interspersed with the bad since the tsunami hit the northeastern city of Kamaishi on March 11. The hospital's generator is working now, and some people are reuniting with loved ones there. But on the down side, more bodies are being found in nearby houses. -
The Japanese government is mobilizing civilian and military teams to help residents and hospital patients evacuate from the exclusion zone around the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Still, some people living along the edge of the zone have refused to leave their homes. -
As search and rescue teams from all over Japan work through tsunami debris in the northeast, they have been joined by a team from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Leader Dave Stone, who has worked recently in New Zealand and Haiti, says his team has never seen anything of "this scope and magnitude." -
Thousands of Japanese are crisscrossing the area where the tsunami hit, trying to find missing loved ones. Hand-scrawled notes plead from message boards, asking relatives to call. One 23-year-old spent $800 and 18 hours to get to her parents' home when she couldn't reach them by phone. -
Authorities in Japan says the death toll could pass 10,000 in one northeastern state alone, following last week's earthquake and tsunami. The Japanese government is struggling to cope as it faces a growing nuclear crisis as well.
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In a Chinese province last year, a drunk young man drove into two girls, killing one of them. He wasn't concerned about ramifications because his father was the police chief. In the past, that relationship would have protected him from the reach of the law, but not in the age of the Internet. The story spread quickly, and the boy went on trial.
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China's President Hu Jintao was treated to an official state dinner with President Obama Wednesday night. The pomp of the visit hasn't managed to obscure the difficult relationship between China and the U.S. The two leaders tried to focus on the positive during a news conference Wednesday.
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Chinese President Hu Jintao is in Washington this week. Though there has been little noticeable personal chemistry between Hu and President Obama, the Chinese people were big fans of Obama when he was elected. Now, their feelings are more nuanced -- though still generally positive. -
This year, for the first time, schools from China took part in international standardized tests, and Chinese students came out on top. But the Chinese realize their educational system -- which stresses memorization and largely ignores critical thinking -- is in need of change. -
China is sucking in many of the world's major commodities -- including, perhaps most surprising, red wine. The Chinese are traditionally not wine drinkers, but as the middle classes earn more money, they are developing a taste for Bordeaux.
