Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet

by Xinran

  As Wen watched Ge’er’s horse recede into the distance, followed by Pad and Zawang, she wondered if she would ever see them again. The rest of her life would not give her enough time to repay all that Ge’er and his family had done for her. “Om mani padme hum,” she murmured under her breath as the figures disappeared into the mountains.

  IT WAS at the ninth mountain that they found Zhuoma’s message. The mountain was covered with pile upon pile of mani stones inscribed with the mantra and passages of Buddhist scripture.

  “They are the Diamond Sutra,” said Tiananmen. “There is one chapter of scripture to each cairn.”

  “May I touch them?” Wen asked.

  “You may,” replied Tiananmen. “When you place your fingers on the words, you will feel the presence of the spirits.”

  For a while the two of them separated, walking around the cairns, reading the prayers preserved in stone. As Wen gazed at them, she tried in vain to imagine how many generations of hands had carved those holy words, piling them up on this mountain to be preserved for thousands of years. Suddenly Tiananmen called out. Wen turned. He was standing waving a white khata scarf that he had taken down from the line of prayer flags fluttering in the wind, and was shouting something indistinguishable. When she reached him, picking her way down the path, he was almost too overcome to speak. She took the scarf from his hands. On it was written a simple message: “Zhuoma is looking for Tiananmen. She awaits him at the next mountain, close to the stonecutter’s hut.”

  Their hearts were in their mouths as they pushed their horses toward the neighboring mountain. How long had the message been there? Would Zhuoma have waited? It took them many days. When they arrived at the foot of the mountain, they saw in the distance a stonecutter’s hut and, standing above it, the statuesque figure of a woman. As their horses thundered toward her, she turned. It was Zhuoma.

  For a long time the three of them remained silent. No words could express the intensity of the emotions they felt. Wen got down from her horse and embraced the friend she had not seen for more than twenty years. Behind her, Tiananmen greeted his old mistress with quiet tears. He had found her, but could not hold her in his arms. In Tibet a single woman could not so much as touch the hand of a man whose life was pledged to the Buddha.

  IT WAS evident from Zhuoma’s silence on the subject that she did not wish to discuss what had happened to her since her kidnapping. Wen and Tiananmen would not have dreamed of undermining her dignity by asking. They learned only that she had been taken to the Chinese city of Xining, in the northeast corner of Qinghai, and had spent many years there before she found a way to leave. For two years she had searched for Gela’s family. When she finally found them, Wen had long since left.

  “How had you come to think of leaving messages in the holy mountains?” asked Wen, astonished that fate should have led Zhuoma to the same course of action as herself.

  “A mani stonecutter told me something that I couldn’t forget,” replied Zhuoma. “He said, ‘Tibetans always find what they have lost in the holy mountains.’ I decided that, each year, I would visit all the holy mountains and if by winter I had received no news, I would return to the first mountain in spring and begin all over again. And that is what I have done,” she said, looking sadly at Tiananmen. “I have visited each mountain many times and now the mountains have delivered to me what I had lost.”

  She turned to Wen.

  “Have you found your Kejun?”

  Wen could only shake her head.

  “Then,” said Zhuoma, “I want to help you find what you have lost. Please tell me what I should do.”

  Zhuoma’s words felt to Wen like a gift from the heavens. Ever since she had met the Chinese people at Wendugongba, she had been reflecting on what she had learned about the Chinese presence in Tibet.

  “I would like to go to Lhasa,” she said. “I think that there I will find members of the Chinese army. It is possible that they might have some record of what happened to my husband’s regiment.”

  Zhuoma glanced inquiringly at Tiananmen.

  “I will take you both to Lhasa,” he said, “but after that, I will be obliged to return to the monastery.”

  Wen could barely look at Zhuoma. She was overwhelmed by the painful realization that her friend would have to face once more the loss of the man she loved.

  7

  OLD HERMIT QIANGBA

  Wen, Zhuoma, and Tiananmen trekked south. It was summer when they reached the area known as the Hundred Lakes and saw the vast Zhaling lake stretching out like a sea beneath Mount Anyemaqen. The wind was gentle and the sun infused them with a sense of warmth and well-being. As they approached the water, they were surprised to see a great many tents down by the shoreline. Wen knew that gatherings were rare among the nomads. Some major celebration must have called these people here. It was in the summer months, when the yaks and sheep were fat, that Tibetans were able to be more sociable.

  They pitched their own tent and tethered the horses. That evening, Tiananmen wandered around the other tents to barter for food with one of the ornaments that Zhuoma had clung to all these years. When he returned he said he had heard that a performance of a horseback opera would take place in two days’ time. Wen was intrigued by the notion of an opera on horseback. Zhuoma remembered such performances from her childhood. They were acted by specially trained lamas, she explained, who rode in costume on horses. There was no talking or singing: it was the patterns that the men made as they rode to the music that told the story.

  That night, although bone weary from the journey, Wen couldn’t get to sleep. She was troubled by the faint sound of someone singing in the distance. It was a song unlike any she had heard before. She wondered if perhaps she was imagining it: Zhuoma and Tiananmen slept on undisturbed.

  The next morning, when Wen told Zhuoma about the night singing, Zhuoma said the old people claimed that ghostly voices came from mountains. A little shiver ran down Wen’s spine.

  The two women had decided to spend the day exploring the lake on horseback and they set off early, taking a leather waterskin with them. As they rode eastward along the water’s edge, they watched birds foraging and playing. A few thin clouds were scudding in the pure blue sky and swooping birds united the heavens and the earth. The scene reminded Wen of the Yangtze delta: of the river that flowed through her hometown, and of lakes Dong-ting and Tai, with their bobbing boats and little bridges made of stone and wood. Half lost in her thoughts, she told Zhuoma about a day when she and Kejun had raced paper boats on Lake Tai. Wen’s boat, it turned out, had sailed smoothly off into the center of the lake, while Kejun’s had just kept turning on the spot. How strange that, in Tibet, the tiny square of paper necessary to make a paper boat would cost more than a meal.

  Zhuoma pulled on her reins. “Can you hear someone singing?”

  Once the clop of their horses’ hooves had stopped, the sound floated over very clearly: there really was a voice, a man’s voice singing a sad melody. Zhuoma spotted two girls nearby carrying water and guided her horse over toward them.

  “Can you hear that singing?” she asked.

  The girls nodded.

  “Do you know who it is?”

  The older of the two girls pointed to a tiny dot on the other side of the lake.

  “It’s Old Hermit Qiangba,” she said. “He sings there every day. I hear him whenever I go to fetch water. My mother says he is the guardian spirit of the lake.”

  The two women turned their horses to ride closer to the singer, but although they rode for two hours, the lake was so large that the hermit still seemed very far away. They could see nothing of his face, only his tattered garments fluttering in the wind. From a distance the large rock upon which he sat appeared to be floating in the middle of the water. When they drew nearer, they saw that it was at the end of a small spit of land that protruded into the lake.

  “What is he singing?” Wen asked Zhuoma.

  “It sounds as if it is part of the great legend
of King Gesar,” said Zhuoma. “The same story that will be performed at the horseback opera tomorrow. The legend has been passed down through the ages from storyteller to storyteller. It is the longest story in the world. Although people know it throughout Tibet, it is particularly dear to the people of this region because it is here, at the source of the Yellow River, that King Gesar made his kingdom.”

  Zhuoma thought that it might be easier to reach the hermit from the other side of the lake and suggested that they try again another day. As they retraced their steps, she told Wen a little about King Gesar.

  Gesar was born into the ruling family of the ancient kingdom of Ling. He was a child of unusual bravery and resourcefulness. But when he became old enough to be king, his uncle Trothung, who wanted the throne for himself, sent Gesar and his mother into exile in a valley at the source of the Yellow River. The valley was a dark, freezing wilderness where neither sun nor moon shone, and it was plagued by demons. Gesar and his mother tamed the evil spirits and subdued the demons, brought order to the waters and grasses, and turned the valley into a fertile paradise for herders, where lush meadows teemed with yaks, horses, and sheep. The heavens later sent down blizzards and frosts to punish Trothung, making the kingdom of Ling uninhabitable. The people of Ling petitioned Gesar to let them come to him, and he gladly helped the six tribes of Ling settle at the source of the Yellow River. For this reason, all Tibetans who lived in this valley regarded themselves as the descendants of the kingdom of Ling—and the children of Gesar.

  By the time the two women returned to their tent, Tiananmen had built a stove out of large stones, on top of which was sitting a pot giving off a delicious smell of meat. He told Zhuoma that he had got hold of half a sheep and had cooked it in the Chinese style.

  “How did you learn to cook Chinese food?” asked Zhuoma in surprise.

  “From you,” Tiananmen replied. “You told me how, when you came back from Beijing.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Zhuoma. “I didn’t even know how to make tsampa then, let alone Chinese food.”

  Tiananmen smiled. “But you talked to me about the Chinese dishes you ate in Beijing, and the taste of their stewed lamb. My father used to say, if you smell a horse’s dung, you can tell where it’s been grazing. If you taste barley wine, you can tell what the barley harvest was like. Didn’t you tell me that the Chinese cook mutton with sweet herbs, that it is tender and comes in a salty broth? So that is how I have made it.”

  Both Zhuoma and Wen burst out laughing.

  “You told me that he never asked questions,” Wen said to Zhuoma. “But he was certainly listening.”

  Tiananmen’s mutton was delicious. Wen couldn’t recall having eaten anything flavored with those particular herbs, but she didn’t say so. She never found out exactly what he had used.

  During the meal, Tiananmen said he had heard that more than a thousand people would come to watch the horseback opera the next day. They could use the opportunity to make inquiries about Wen’s husband. The three friends spent the evening in high spirits, as if sure that all their hopes would soon be realized. Wen went to sleep thinking of Kejun. Perhaps she would not need to travel to Lhasa. Perhaps the holy mountains would, after all, return to her what she had lost. In the night, the sound of the hermit singing drifted into her dreams. She and Kejun were following a great master, who was choosing mani stones for them on one of the holy mountains …

  THE NEXT morning, crowds of people began to assemble on the hillside. Since the performance would take place on the plain, the slopes gave them a clear view of the action. Wen had seen nothing like this since the Dharmaraja ceremony at Wendugongba. She felt both fear and elation at the sight of so many people. She, Zhuoma, and Tiananmen arrived early, while the lamas were still painting their faces and preparing their costumes. Through the flaps in the actors’ tents they could make out many of the beautifully colored props. A few young men hung around the tents, trying on hats, helmets, and garlands. Other young people were dancing, singing, and waving colored flags. There was an atmosphere of high excitement.

  With the sounding of a few notes on a simple stringed instrument, the performance began. Wen had been worried that she wouldn’t understand what was happening, but the stylized movements of the horseback actors made everything clear. The opera told the part of the legend where Gesar was sent down to earth by the bodhisattva Chenresig, who watched over the human world to rid mankind of evil spirits and demons, subdue all violence, and help the weak. The guardian spirit of the faith and the spirit of war accompanied Gesar into the world of men. Gesar won the horse race by which the ruler of the kingdom of Ling was chosen, and was given the title King Gesar and King of the Martial Spirits. Leading all the spirits, Gesar embarked on a military quest throughout the land, bringing peace and stability to the nation. This great task accomplished, the spirits flew back to the courts of heaven.

  Wen thought the lamas looked like characters from the Peking Opera she had watched as a child in the teahouses of Nanjing, except they were mounted on horseback. Waving flags and banners, they rode out in various poses, producing strange shouts and roars. It all reminded Wen of the episode in The Journey to the West where Monkey King created havoc in heaven. Zhuoma stood at her side, quietly explaining the few parts that Wen couldn’t understand.

  “This is the fight with the demon king.”

  “That’s the king’s beautiful concubine praying for him.”

  “That villain is his uncle Trothung, gloating from the sidelines.”

  As she watched, Wen was full of admiration for the way in which the gestures of the actors were based on those of daily life. She was surprised that the actor-lamas, who lived enclosed in monasteries, could know these gestures so well. But perhaps there was not so much difference between the inside and the outside of a monastery. Increasingly, she was coming to understand that the whole of Tibet was one great monastery. Everyone was infused with the same religious spirit, whether they wore religious robes or not.

  When evening came and the lamas had tethered their horses and packed up their costumes, the audience settled down around campfires, drinking barley wine and butter tea. Sheep were roasted whole over the bonfires and the smell wafted through the air as the fat spat and sizzled in the fire like fireworks.

  Suddenly, there was a loud commotion and everyone rushed over to see what was going on. Someone called out for hot water and a menba.

  Zhuoma squeezed into the crowd to listen to what was being said.

  “A woman has gone into labor,” she told Wen. “It sounds as if she’s in trouble and her family is begging for help. Can you do anything?”

  Wen hesitated. In all the years she had been in Tibet, she had hardly used her medical knowledge. The language barrier, the use of different herbs, the fact that Tibetans often relied on prayer when someone was seriously ill had rendered her hard-won knowledge useless. Would it be responsible for her now to claim she could help a difficult labor? Zhuoma saw her indecision.

  “Come,” she said. “They are desperate. At least go and see.”

  In a sparsely furnished tent lay a woman with an ashen face. Her whole body was shaking and streaked with blood. The baby’s head was showing, but the rest couldn’t emerge because the umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck. More dangerous still, the woman’s family was urging her to bear down and the baby was turning purple, strangled by the tightening umbilical cord.

  Wen cried out to the woman that she should stop pushing. As she washed her hands, she yelled instructions at Zhuoma on how to assist her. Silenced and impressed by her decisiveness, the family just stood by and watched.

  Wen carefully pushed the baby’s head back inside the mother’s body. She heard several sharp intakes of breath close by and she tried her hardest to remember the midwifery she had learned at medical school. For difficulties such as this, she needed gently to massage the womb. Zhuoma told everyone that she was a Chinese menba, that she was using Chinese methods of delivery to
help them. Wen then gestured at the mother to push, and after a little while the baby emerged, slowly but surely. It was a healthy boy.

  Surrounded by cries of excitement, Wen expertly cut the umbilical cord, drew out the afterbirth, and cleaned the woman’s lower body with a special medicinal wine that the family brought to her. Then she watched as, like the children of Om and Pad, the baby was given a special herbal broth to protect it from insect bites.

  When Wen passed the father the swaddled child, he was afraid to hold him. Instead, he opened his robe and asked Wen to put the child inside for him. He was overcome with emotion. He told Wen and Zhuoma that they had longed for a child for many years, but their hopes had been dashed every time because of miscarriages or problems in labor.

  “Now I know of a second Chinese menba who has done a good thing,” the man said.

  Wen froze. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Have you met another Chinese doctor?”

  “My father told me about one,” the man replied. “He said that, many years ago, a Chinese doctor was given a sky burial and, because of this, the fighting between Tibetans and Chinese in this area came to an end.”

  Wen looked at Zhuoma. Her heart was pounding and she could hardly breathe.

  Could this doctor have been Kejun?

  Seeing her emotion, Zhuoma helped her to sit down.

  “I don’t know the details,” the man continued, “but my father used to say that Old Hermit Qiangba knew the story.”

  At that moment, a man dashed into the tent and presented Wen with a snow-white khata scarf, a token of gratitude. Then he led her outside to the waiting crowd, who greeted her with whistles and cheers. Two old women, who were cooking mutton on a bonfire, came over and served her two fat legs of meat in honor of what she had done. The feasting went on well into the night. It was not until several hours later that Wen was able to return to her tent. She and Zhuoma had decided that first thing in the morning they would set out in search of Qiangba. She lay down, her head spinning sl ightly from the barley wine she had drunk. As the wind blew outside and the butter lamps flickered, she strained to hear the sound of singing from the lake.