Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Sky Burial

I just finished reading Xinran's Sky Burial and it truly is as its' subtitle suggests - an epic love story of Tibet.

Xinran recounts the true story of Shu Wen, a Chinese women she interviewed in Suzhou in 1994. Wen ventured into Tibet in the 1950s in search of her husband, a Chinese doctor and soldier who was missing in action.

She wandered for over 30 years in the mountains of north Tibet with a nomadic family who saved her with the unwavering belief that she would find her husband someway, somehow.

This is a fantastic study of Tibetan religious beliefs and the descriptions of the nomadic way of life and their instinctual movements as the seasons changed was eye-opening and beyond my imagining as a modern-day city girl.

While the fate of Wen's husband is revealed in the end, we're left wanting as to what becomes of Wen, who disappeared without a trace 2 days after her first meeting with Xinran.

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