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An Epic Love Story of Tibet
by Xue Xinran
Book Reviewed by:An extraordinary portrait of a woman and the land of Tibet, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love loss, loyalty, and survival.
It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the author of The Good Women of
China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet an
oddly dressed woman who had just crossed the border from Tibet into China.
Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story
of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet.
Shu Wen and her husband had been married for only a few months in the 1950s when
he joined the Chinese army and was sent to Tibet for the purpose of unification
of the two countries. Shortly after he left she was notified that he had been
killed, although no details were given. Determined to find the truth, Shu Wen
joined a militia unit going to the Tibetan north, where she soon was separated
from the regiment. Without supplies and knowledge of the language, she wandered,
trying to find her way until, on the brink of death, she was rescued by a family
of nomads under whose protection she moved from place to place with the seasons
and eventually came to discover the details of her husband's death.
In the haunting Sky Burial, Xinran has recreated Shu Wen's journey, writing
beautifully and simply of the silence and the emptiness in which Shu Wen was
enveloped. The book is an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at
the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting
tale of love loss, loyalty, and survival.
Translated by Esther Tyldesley and Julia Lovell.
1
Shu Wen
Her inscrutable eyes looked past me at the world outside the window--the crowded
street, the noisy traffic, the regimented lines of modern tower blocks. What
could she see there that held such interest? I tried to draw her attention back.
"How long were you in Tibet?"
"More than thirty years," she said softly.
"Thirty years! But why did you go there? For what?"
"For love," she answered simply, again looking far beyond me at the
empty sky outside.
"For love?"
"My husband was a doctor in the People's Liberation Army. His unit was sent
to Tibet. Two months later, I received notification that he had been lost in
action. We had been married for less than a hundred days.
"I refused to accept that he was dead," she continued. "No one at
the military headquarters could tell me anything about how he had died. The only
thing I could think of was to go to Tibet myself and find ...
For eight groundbreaking years, Xinran presented a nightly radio programme in China called "Words on the Night Breeze", during which she invited women to call in and talk about themselves. Her first book, The Good Women of China, is the story of how she reached out to women across the country, despite the restrictions imposed on Chinese journalists. She reveals stories of inconceivable suffering; forced marriages, sexual abuse, repression...Yet above all her stories reveal how love survives; that despite cruelty, despite politics, the female urge to nurture and cherish remains - Sky Burial is a novelization of one of the stories she was told...continued
Full Review
(337 words)
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Da Chen
I read Sky Burial in one sitting, not being able to wait to get to the end of the tale. I've read love stories before, but none like this. One could only wish to be loved so, or, even better, to love so.With an average elevation of 14-16,000 feet (sources differ), it's the highest nation on earth (by comparison, the highest mountain in the 48 contiguous states is Mt. Whitney at 14,494 feet)
Five of Asia's great rivers including the Indus, Mekong and Brahmaputra have their headwaters in Tibet.
Nearly half the world's population lives downstream from Tibet.
Tibet's unique ecosystem is home to many rare species including the snow leopard, blue sheep and Tibetan wild ass.
Tibet fully embraced Buddhism in the 8th century AD (many centuries after the philosophy/religion began around 500 BC). Tibetan Buddhism has been a principal target of communist reforms since the China declared/re-declared (dependent on one's point of view) sovereignty ...
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