Stretching from Shanghai to the Kazakhstan border, the Old Silk Road carries people from a modern and industrialized city through "two-horse" and "one-horse" towns and the Gobi Desert, ending where China itself ends.

G312 is, according to Rob Gifford, "China's Mother Road."

The British-born journalist, now the London bureau chief for National Public Radio, describes the ancient route -- and the people he met along the way -- in his book "China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power."

He traveled the highway by bus, truck and taxi -- sometimes hitching rides -- while reporting a seven-part series for NPR in 2004. His 3,000-mile trek from the China's far east to its far west grew into his 2007 book -- and led him here.

Wednesday, Gifford talked about his travels -- as well as the political, economic, cultural and social challenges facing China -- at Yakima's Capitol Theatre. His talk was part of the Yakima Town Hall Lecture Series.

The nonprofit organization has been bringing internationally known speakers to Yakima for nearly 40 years. Season tickets are $70.

Gifford was the third of this season's four speakers. The 2008-2009 season featured author Frank McCourt and Canadian diplomat Peter Sutherland. It concludes April 22 with Lisa Ling, the first female host of National Geographic Channel's "Explorer."

On Wednesday, Gifford read excerpts from his book and showed photographs from his trek across China.

"I want to take you along with me today on that journey," he said. "What we don't often get is a picture of the Chinese people. They're faceless people in the Western mind."

Fluent in Mandarin, Gifford, 41, has spent much of the past 20 years studying or reporting from China. He has a master's degree in East Asia Regional Studies from Harvard University and covered China as a correspondent for NPR for six years.

Series spokeswoman Kay Carbery said Gifford "brings a unique insight into the people, history, economics, politics and current challenges of this potential rising power."

Gifford described China as a mobile 21st-century society governed by a 1950s political system, where there are now more Christians than Communist Party members. There's tension between new hope and enduring despair, old-world traditions, technology and new ways of thinking foster nearly unimaginable contradictions.

As one example, Gifford described meeting a Daoist hermit, a man whom Gifford said lived in a cave but -- like some 600 million people in China -- also had a cell phone.

"I think there's a certain amount of confusion about China," said Gifford, who opened his talk with a vignette about meeting Amway salesmen in the middle of the Gobi Desert.

"Being confused is OK," he said. "You should be confused. It's supremely confusing actually. If you're not confused about modern China, then you haven't been paying attention."

Gifford compared highway 312 to U.S. Route 66, which originally ran nearly 2,500 miles from Chicago to L.A. He called the ancient road a metaphor for a nation on the move, a nation that's experiencing rapid change yet carries a centuries-old history of collapsing and uniting.

"China may be a threat. China may take over the world," he said. "But we have to look at it from the picture on the ground, not based on prejudices of the past."

An estimated 150 million people travel route 312 and other highways from rural China to cities like Shanghai, searching for jobs and urban prosperity. There's a burgeoning middle class in China. And the nation is far ahead of so many other developing countries.

But, travel far enough along the road and "pretty soon you're back in the 18th, 12th, seventh centuries," Gifford said. "What is happening in the cities is amazing. But you don't have to go very far to go back in time."

"China is in this transition from the completely managed state to who knows what," he said. "China is not the police state it used to be, but it is still a police state when it wants to be."

Gifford, who left China in 2005, ended his lecture with an image from his trip, a photograph of route 312 heading into the Gobi Desert and disappearing in the distance.

"I think China is actually more fragile than it seems," said Gifford, who's hoping to return to the land of many contrasts.

"I think once you get the China bug it's hard to lose," he said. "God-willing, I will go back."