Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet

On foot, by rattling truck and local bus, by jeep and motorcycle, American
poet and musician Scott Ezell explores the Tibetan borderlands in the twentyfirst-century Chinese empire. The journey starts in Dali, in the foothills of the
Himalaya in southwestern China, and extends north a thousand miles through
towns and villages along the edge of Tibet, finally arriving at Kekexili, the
highest plateau in the world, and crossing the Kunlun Mountains. Ezell takes
us through landscapes of blond and gold barley fields, alpine meadows ablaze
with wildflowers, silver-blue rivers beneath “clouds like burning aluminium,”
and snow peaks “cracking and shattering into jagged resplendence against the
sky.”
Balancing the epic is the intimate. Fluent in Mandarin, Ezell chats with
farmers, shopkeepers, lamas, nomads, and police along way. There is also
outrage in Ezell’s account, as, over the course of many years and numerous
trips, he witnesses the rise of militarization, surveillance, destructive resource
extraction and the killing of entire river ecosystems by massive dams.
The work of an exceptionally talented writer at the height of his craft, Journey
to the End of the Empire is both a love song for the earth, and a cry of dissent
against environmental destruction, centralized national narratives, and the
marginalization of minority peoples.