Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Sky Burial

Achtung!

A book to recommend.

Read Sky Burial by Xinran.

It's a very touching story of a Chinese woman who went into Tibet during the 60s (?) to look for her husband, who went missing together with his troop on their way to one of their stations in Tibet, amidst the tumultous times when China and Tibet were in conflict over Tibet's stoic stand for independence (my first full-stop in this paragraph --->) .

After some less-than-desirable experiences in this vast foreign land, she ended up living in Tibet for more than 20 years, and in the process, slowly become a Tibetan herself. There are slow moments in this book where the author took pains to describe typical days in the life of a nomadic Tibetan family, and even cyclical periods of the year that marked the end of a season and the beginning of the next, all without signficant changes in climates, just a shift in their routine activities. The details here are enough to give you a pretty good mental picture of their lives without being long-drawn, boring and lifelessly precise.

But heck, they never mentioned anywhere that they had a beautiful Princess of Tibet...

But the part that grabbed me the most was a three-paged explanation on her husband's death, and how one act of self-sacrifice resolved the long-standing conflict between the two people.

If nothing, read the book for this part.

One of the best three pages I have ever come across.

Take a peek of the book at www.amazon.com . Type Sky Burial, and search.