This romantically titled book explores the incorporation of Yunnan into China over a long period, from the second century BCE to the 20th century CE. Bin Yang suggests that the making of Yunnan over the course of 2,000 years is not only crucial to the development of imperial China, but also to the formation of East Asia and Southeast Asia. According to Yang, previous academic works on Yunnan's history have been somewhat problematic. While most Chinese scholars look at Yunnan with a northern Sino-centric perspective, Western scholars fail to explore Yunnan's incorporation by China as a macro-region. Adopting a trans-regional perspective, Between Winds and Clouds argues that both global interactions and Chinese colonialism accounted for the success of the incorporation of Yunnan by China.

Besides the Introduction, this book comprises of six chapters. Yang firstly demonstrates the significance of Yunnan in Eurasian communications through a brief examination of the Southwest Silk Road. The strategic significance of Yunnan led to intermittent external invasions. Chapter three thus examines the military conquests of Yunnan from the third century BCE to the 14th century CE, reframing them in the context of the transnational, cross-boundary or cross-regional interactions that encompassed parts of East, Southeast, Central and South Asia. Chapter four focuses on the administrative system imposed on Yunnan by Chinese states, and its influence on local politics from the Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty, highlighting the vicissitudes of the native chieftain system (tusi zhidu). The following two chapters deal with Yunnan's social and economic aspects. Chapter five examines the historical process of immigration and incorporation that initiated a new society in Yunnan from the Ming dynasty. Yang argues that both the Sinicization of the native and the indigenization of Chinese immigrants contributed to the birth of a new hybrid society in Yunnan, and to the emergence of a “Yunnanese” regional identity that carried the assumption that Yunnan was part of China. Chapter six explores the economic reorientation of Yunnan during the Ming–Qing period. Yang shows that Yunnan's supply of silver and copper in that period made a great contribution to the domestic and foreign economy of the empire, which in turn transformed the local economic structure. In contemporary China, Yunnan has more ethnic minorities (shaoshu minzu) than any other province or autonomous region. The last chapter of the book offers a detailed description of the CCP government's efforts from the 1950s to the 1980s to identify and classify ethnic groups into minzu of the national family. According to Yang these efforts were in essence a continuation of the work carried out by imperial courts. In addition, Yang argues that although the majority of ethnic groups finally accepted their categories, the identification was conducted without coherent criteria.

Yang bases his study on a large body of sources, but the primary sources are mainly official records. Although Yang declares his reading of them critical, the heavy reliance on official records sometimes reduces the persuasiveness of his arguments. One example may be his examination of native elites' acceptance of Confucian ideology in chapter five, the sources for which are basically gazetteers. Some fieldwork on collecting folk songs, sagas, records, relics and so on may help complement the official sources. Besides, although it is unreasonable to expect a book dealing with such a long history to provide many details, further explanations of some crucial historical incidents are often necessary. For instance, in 829, Nanzhao, a kingdom founded in Yunnan, suddenly plundered Sichuan and put an end to its tributary relationship with Tang China. Unfortunately, Yang offers no explanation of the reason for such an epoch-making diplomatic incident. Another omission is in the last chapter: when exploring the ethnic identification in Yunnan, Yang skips from the early Qing to the PRC. Considering that it was in the late Qing to Republican period that Chinese modern notions of “nation,” “sovereignty,” and “ethnicity” emerged and matured, such a skip seems to be inappropriate.

Despite these deficiencies, Yang's book sets an example of studying local history with a trans-regional perspective. Pointing out Yunnan's geographical position as a bridge among regions, Yang traces various elements from different regions that contributed to the making of Yunnan and its incorporation into imperial China. In so doing, Yang convincingly shows the global influences on the history of Yunnan and trans-regional interactions in the formation of imperial China. Meanwhile, Yang's descriptions of Yunnan's economical contribution to the empire and the bidirectional cultural influences between the natives and Chinese immigrants lead us to reflect our conventional opinions of the relationship between core and periphery, centre and frontier. In particular, his analysis of Yunnan's role in the creation of China as a multiethnic state greatly enriches our understanding of China's transformation from an empire into a modern nation-state.