''A brilliant personal account of China''s borderlands and peoples'' Francis Fukuyama''A splendid journey through eighty years of Chinese history ... Edward Wong is about as knowledgeable a guide to China as a reader could ever hope to find'' Barbara DemickThe son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets.His father toiled in restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People''s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao''s promise of a powerful China.His astonishing 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 mysterious past while assessing fo