'A brilliant personal account of China's borderlands and peoples' Francis Fukuyama 'Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find' Barbara Demick 'Finely crafted ... opens up the complexities of Chinese politics and Chinese life in a way that general readers will find fascinating' Guardian The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in restaurants and rarely spoke of his childhood during the Japanese occupation of China and his years in the People's Liberation Army under Mao. His journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he planned a desperate escape to Hong Kong. When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his father's past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nation's astounding economic boom and global expansion - and grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping. He witnessed protests and civil rights struggles in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and had an insider's view of the world's two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads. In this essential work for understanding China today, Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans nearly a century of momentous change.

The essential history of modern China, told through the story of one family