Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: pt. I XINJIANG -- THE NEW FRONTIER -- 1.Uighurs Are Like Pandas' -- 2.The New Silk Road -- 3.Exiles -- 4.The Great Game Again -- 5.Return to Kashgar -- 6.Three Borders -- 7.Uighurstan -- pt. II TIBET -- THE WILD WEST -- 8.The Tibetan Borderlands -- 9.Lhasa -- 10.A Night at the Nangma -- 11.U-Tsang -- 12.High Plateau Drifter -- 13.The Precious Jewel of the Snows -- 14.Going Down -- pt. III YUNNAN -- TROUBLE IN PARADISE -- 15.Shiny Happy Minorities -- 16.Dailand -- 17.Down the Mekong -- 18.The Dai Diaspora -- 19.With the Wa -- 20.Women for Sale -- pt. IV DONGBEI -- PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES -- 21.The Pyongyang Express -- 22.The Third Korea -- 23.Spreading the Word -- 24.The Arctic Borderlands -- 25.Along the Amur -- 26.An Empire Expanding.

Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shaghai, 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. 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.