At the Edge of Empire

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“Edward Wong’s exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America’s finest reporters on China could deliver. In tracing his father’s journey—from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to America—Wong gives us a profound story of modern China itself. Anyone who once was absorbed by the power of Wild Swans will savor this meditation on memory, history, and belonging.” —Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book AwardOne of Foreign Policy’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024An epic narrative that tells the story of modern China by braiding an intimate family memoir with contemporary reporting by a New York Times diplomatic correspondent and former Beijing bureau chiefThe son of Chinese immigrants, Edward Wong grew up around Washington, DC, with family secrets. His father worked in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke about his native land or his time as a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Chinese civil war, then fell under the spell of Mao’s promise of a strong and modern China. He went on to spend harsh years with the army on a journey that took him from Manchuria in the remote northeast to Xinjiang, along the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the rule of the Communist Party, he made plans for a desperate escape to Hong Kong.When Edward Wong moved to Beijing for The New York Times during a pivotal period, he investigated his father’s mysterious past while also assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He had a front-row seat to the nation’s economic boom and geopolitical expansion, as well as the darker currents of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. Following in his father’s footsteps, he witnessed ethnic clashes in Xinjiang and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. And he had an insider’s view to the world’s two superpowers meeting at a crossroads.As a son considering his father’s life and his own time in China, Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans more than eighty years and gives insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. At the Edge of Empire is the essential work for understanding China today.