In the first half of the book Rob Gifford focuses solely on his experiences on Route 312. As the book progresses through his travels Gifford begins to concentrate more and more on major problems in China. One of Gifford’s experiences touches on a major problem in China, which is the common reoccurrence of bribing. In China, bribing government officials is a very common thing to do. Bribery in China causes a lot of illegal activity to go purposely unseen by local government officials. One of these unseen misfortunes is sex trafficking.

Before the Cultural Revolution began in 1949, woman were bought and sold as wives, for centuries. It took more than ” sixty years to change five thousand years of male domination.” Today that problem is not the case but instead the problem is that, “Chinese women are struggling to hold onto some of the gains of the Communist years.” These principles Mao Ze Dong established have been vanished and so has a moral standard for the people of China. We all “have a moral standard that is inside us. It is built into us. Chinese also having a moral standard but nothing external is stopping them, they just do whatever they want for themselves, regardless of right and wrong.” These young girls and woman know that it isn’t moral to be a prostitute but their government is not forbidding it. Vastly the number is growing “between 10 to 20 million Chinese women are involved in the sex trade in China.”

Places like these (to the right) “are advertised openly, and unashamedly, and both are generally just fronts for prostitution.” Karaoke bars have a small fee for woman to “accompany you to drink, to dance and to sing. There is, of course, a fourth accompaniment but that costs extra.” Gifford goes to a karaoke bar and chooses a girl to accompany him. While Gifford talks to the girl she is shy, nervous and seems very scared. “She is paid twelve dollars for accompanying a man to sing and chat and dance, and if the man wants the fourth accompaniment in his hotel room, he must triple the price, to nearly forty dollars…. A third of that sum she must then give to the mami, who runs the karaoke bar.” The girl Gifford talks to makes such a small amount of money for something so preciously that she gives away each day. Some men don’t pay even pay for the fourth accompaniment. Gifford states that “management has good relations with the local police (or, more likely offers them free visits), the authorities will leave them alone. These places are left alone because local officials are paid off to not say anything to the government. Because of this, many problems within local towns and cities are silenced and never changed. Some of Gifford’s points make China seem like it could be the next super power. But with problems like this, their government is in desperate need of a change.