The Emperor Far Away
Travels at the Edge of China
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- 12,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
'Engaging … this absorbing book is a tantalizing introduction to China's diversity and the ethnic and political dynamics at the extremes of its empire' Publishers Weekly
'Eimer has forged genuinely new ground as he recounts his travels to China's furthest corners … A fascinating picture of a part of the country rarely examined' Daily Telegraph
Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shanghai, China's borderlands are populated by around one hundred million people who are not Han Chinese. For many of these restive minorities, the old Chinese adage 'the mountains are high and the Emperor far away', meaning Beijing's grip on power is tenuous and its influence unwelcome, continues to resonate.
Among these lands are Xinjiang and the Uyghur Muslims who have historically dwelled there, now the subject of a hugely controversial social campaign by a central Chinese government determined to impose control over every square mile of its territory.
Travelling through China's most distant and unknown reaches, David Eimer explores the increasingly tense relationship between the Han Chinese and the ethnic minorities. Deconstructing the myths represented by Beijing, Eimer reveals a shocking and fascinating picture of a China that is more of an empire than a country.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An ancient saying, "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away," lends this engaging travelogue its title as Eimer, Beijing correspondent for the U.K.'s Sunday Telegraph, takes readers to China's border regions. He begins in the far western Xinjiang province, home to the bulk of China's restive Uighur population, with whom he mingles and commiserates amid waves of Han migration and state repression. Next, Eimer explores Tibet, demystifying standard Western images of its people, while contextualizing their struggles with Chinese domination and encroachment. Part three moves into Yunnan, as Eimer mingles with the Dai and other "model minorities" along China's massive, porous, and fairly lawless border with the regions of Southeast Asia. Finally, Eimer scouts the three provinces of Dongbei, along China's northeast border with North Korea and Russia's Far East an area China is poised to exploit, if not in a territorial grab then via economic colonization. Narrated by this curious Englishman and peopled by a cast of natives, settlers, tourists, and ex-pats, this absorbing book is a tantalizing introduction to China's diversity and the ethnic and political dynamics at the extremes of its empire. Channeling wanderlust while limning the challenges for both pan-border minorities and global powers in these historic, strategic, and resource-rich lands, Eimer's detailed survey of minority China should interest travel junkies and students of ethnography and geopolitics.
