The New York Times diplomatic correspondent and son of Chinese immigrants to the US Edward Wong grew up in a family of secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants, rarely speaking of home or his years in the People’s Liberation Army under Mao.

When Wong became the paper’s Beijing bureau chief, the role brought both discoveries of his father’s own mysterious past and rare insider’s insights to a nation undergoing decades of momentous change: astounding economic boom and global expansion; Xi Jinping’s nationalistic rule; ethnic struggles in Xinjiang and Tibet; and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The resulting book At the Edge of Empire is at once a moving chronicle of a family and an essential work for understanding China today.

The Washington Post’s Asia-Pacific editor Anna Fifield meets him.