Black Dragon River: A Journey Down The Amur River At The Borderlands Of Empires

Black Dragon River is a personal journey down one of Asia’s great rivers that reveals the region’s essential history and culture. The world’s ninth largest river, the Amur serves as a large part of the border between Russia and China. As a crossroads for the great empires of Asia, this area offers journalist Dominic Ziegler a lens with which to examine the societies at Europe’s only borderland with east Asia. He follows a journey from the river's top to bottom, and weaves the history, ecology and peoples to show a region obsessed with the past—and to show how this region holds a key to the complex and critical relationship between Russia and China today. The Amur is also the most elusive of Asia’s mightiest rivers, traversing difficult terrain. Ziegler travels on horseback from the Mongolian steppe into the taiga, and later takes the Trans-Siberian Railway through the inland water meadow valley. The river's history stretches from Genghis Khan to modern times, symbolizing national identity and the complex relations between China and Russia, shaped by centuries of conquest, conflict, and shared history.