Yook Kearn Wong, then a member of the Chinese military, in 1953.

A reporter learns his father’s past

My colleague Edward Wong, who worked in China first as a correspondent and then as the Beijing bureau chief for The Times, knew that his father served in China’s army. But it wasn’t until he was researching his new book, “At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning With China,” that Ed uncovered the full story.

Yook Kearn Wong, Ed’s father, was stationed in Xinjiang, a region in China’s northwest, in 1952. There he would take part in efforts that laid the groundwork for China to rule over that area. Later, after he survived famine, he knew he had to escape China. He reached the U.S. in 1967.

“I marvel,” Ed writes, “at the ways my family’s story has looped like a Möbius strip around multiple generations and around the history of China.”