Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Xinran Xinran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 19, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Inspired by a brief 1994 interview with an aged Chinese woman named Shu Wen, Beijing-born, London-based journalist Xinran (The Good Women of China) offers a delicately wrought account of Wen's 30-year search for her husband in Tibet, where he disappeared in 1958. After less than 100 days of marriage, Wen's husband, Kejun, a doctor in the People's Liberation Army, is posted to Tibet and two months later is reported killed. Stunned and disbelieving, 26-year-old Wen is determined to find Kejun herself; a doctor also, she gets herself posted to the isolated Tibetan area where Kejun had been. There, as one of the few women in the Chinese army, she endures much hardship and rescues a Tibetan noblewoman named Zhuoma. After being separated from her fellow soldiers in the wake of an ambush by Tibetan rebels, Wen, accompanied by Zhuoma, sets off on a trek through the harsh landscape. Years later, after going native with a tribe of yak herders, Wen learns the circumstances of Kejun's death and understands that her husband was caught in a fatal misunderstanding between two vastly different cultures. Woven through with fascinating details of Tibetan culture and Buddhism, Xinran's story portrays a poignant, beautiful attempt at reconciliation.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

In China these days, Tibet is all the rage: Beijing hipsters lounge in bars festooned with yak horns, pop divas sing ballads about Lhasa, and tourists mob the rooftop of the world. This novel, by a Beijing journalist now living in London, plays into the fantasy of the region as a Wild West populated by noble savages, with much to teach the cosmopolitan Chinese. Purporting to be a fictionalized account of a true story, it tells of a Chinese woman whose husband dies while on an Army expedition in Tibet, in 1958. She heads out west to learn the truth about his death, and winds up living with nomads for three decades, conveniently missing out on the Cultural Revolution. For American readers, the urge to mythologize the frontier will be familiar; but here there are no bad guys, only misunderstandings.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 206 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; First Printing edition (July 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385515480
• ISBN-13: 978-0385515481
• Product Dimensions: 4.8 x 0.8 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #875,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #79 in Books > Travel > Asia > Tibet

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "War gives you no time to study and no chance to adapt", July 19, 2005

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet (Hardcover)

Sky Burial is a novel that transcends the centuries, as a young Chinese wife, Shu Wen, a physician, joins the army in search of her husband, Kejun, reportedly killed in Tibet. A doctor as well, Kejun volunteered to aid to the Chinese soldiers, fighting for dominance of Tibet. Unlike the other soldiers killed in action, there is no information as to cause of death, no acclaim for the fallen man as a hero. His bride refuses to believe Kejun has perished, traveling the same route her husband took. Shu Wen has no idea at the start of the journey that she will spend the next thirty years looking for traces of her love.

In 1958, when Shu Wen joins the army to follow Kejun, China is recovering from decades of civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists and Mao is rebuilding the motherland. The Communists have had control of the country since 1949, nurturing patriotic extremism; loved ones are often separated in service of the country. Shu Wen starts out with a contingent of soldiers and eventually they come across a stranded woman, Zhuoma, a Tibetan who will prove a trusted friend and guide for a young woman far from home and family, a bride who does not speak the language.

Zhuoma has her own fascinating familial tale, which she relates to her new friend, as the two set out in the direction Kejun traveled. The women are beset by a number of trials, separated from the soldiers during a skirmish, rescued by a nomadic Tibetan family who take them in, caring for Shu Wen as she recovers her strength. It is through this family that Shu Wen learns the patterns of Tibetan life, the spiritual nature of their days and the rituals that have accommodated their needs for generations. Far from the world she has known, it is possible to exist in this rarified state of prayerful existence, lost in the centuries-old daily routines. One of Tibet's most profound religious ceremonies, the Sky Burial "manifests the harmony between heaven and earth, nature and man". This ritual reflects the Tibetan philosophy concerning the connectedness of all things, the natural flow, the great design of the spiritual universe. While Shu Wen is absorbing these time-honored traditions, her country is changing from one decade to another, rendering the China of her memory virtually unrecognizable.

Shu Wen's odyssey is related by a journalist who learns the story firsthand in an interview; soon after, the woman disappears once again into history. In thirty years of wandering, dear friends are lost and found and a human spirit awakened, as a woman continues her quest with incredible tenacity, the love of her mate filling the pages of this book with transcendent moments and indelible images. Time falls away, days reduced to the most essential elements, families immersed in Tibetan culture and religious ceremony, spending their every waking moment in prayer. Sky Burial is a poignant testimony to the power of love, commitment and spiritual awareness. Luan Gaines/2005.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, astonishing, and remarkable., January 13, 2006

By 

M. S. Bowden (Xiamen, China) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet (Hardcover)

'Sky Burial' is an astounding and remarkable tale and follows hot on the heels of Xinran's first book 'The Good Women of China'. It is a story of love, adventure, loss, friendship, and belonging. It is a true emotional roller-coaster which will, I daresay, not fail to have a profound effect upon most readers.

Xinran wrote 'Sky Burial' after a two-day-long conversation with the subject of the story, Shu Wen. Wen left her home town of Suzhou, in the east of China, for Tibet in the mid-1950s in order to discover what had happened to her husband, Kejun, who had been sent there as a doctor in the People's Liberation Army. Wen travels to this vast, distant land as a brave but somewhat naive twenty-six year old Han Chinese woman and returns some three decades later a profoundly different person, having been transformed by time and circumstances into a Tibetan Buddhist nomad.

It is unsurprising, having read this book, that Xinran felt an intense desire to tell the world Shu Wen's story. Indeed, Shu Wen's story has, according to Xinran, been one of the three greatest lessons of her life. It will no doubt inspire many other readers with what one may interpet as its main message: that one should never lose hope.

The book is also interesting on a number of other levels. Firstly, it is a lesson on cultural exchange; what happens when is thrown into a culture completely alien to their own. The first section of the book explores how acts and beliefs which at first appear barbaric to Shu Wen come to make sense with the passage of time and when explained in their proper cultural context. Secondly, the story is interesting for the insight it provides into the life of Tibetan nomads in particular and Tibetan culture in general. Thirdly, the book sheds a different light on life in the People's Republic of China over the last thirty years in comparison with the works of other authors such as Jung Chang and Ma Jian.

'Sky Burial' is a stunning read, both for those with a deep-seated interest in Chinese and Tibetan culture and also for those who are inspired by tales of extraordinary compassion and humanity.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sky Burial - A Unique Love Story, April 2, 2006

By 

Dana49 (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet (Hardcover)

Xinran's story tells about the life of a Chinese medical student, Shu Wen, and her one and only love, Kejun. Spanning a thirty year period, Shu Wen experiences what true love really is; travels and lives amongst a unique and different culture; and then returns to an unfamiliar world.
Xinran's "Sky Burial" is an interesting, enjoyable, learning experience. It's a quick read that will hold your attention from start to finish. Wait for a cold and rainy afternoon, sink into an overstuffed chair, and endulge yourself in a love story like no other.