Bought at Book Juggler, this will be Letter X in my ABC Challenge.

201 pages

11/1/07 currently reading... Already swept away by the poetic writting...

Finished 11/13/07

This was a beautiful book, I learned a lot I didn't know about Tibetian/Chinese culture, I'm not exactly sure if this book is really fiction and thats what makes it great.

Mailed in a book box to BCer Love2cook.

Received in a rabck box of books from chevygoddess. Thank you for your kindness.

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Got this one from Mom who is culling her HUGE TBR pile of books, I will find a new home for it.

Releasing as a selection from the General Literature VBB, Happy Reading!

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I read THE GOOD WOMEN OF CHINA so I am excited to read this one. Thank for sharing with me.

This was an almost unbelievable story. It is hard to believe someone would spend all those years doing what Wen did. It was beautifully told.

Enjoy! KTM book off to NancyNova for the ABC VBB box. Trust you enjoy the book.

Book arrived. Adding to Mt Toobie and pondering making it the "X" author when that bookring comes around.

Bookbox - ABC VBB; Sky Burial refers to a way the Tibetians bury their dead, but you don't get that until the very end. It's labeled as fiction, but reads like a biography. Shu Wen became a physician & married another doctor in the People's Liberation Army that was sent to Tibet. When she got word that he was lost in action, she went to Tibet to find him, only Tibet was not like China at all - she was taken in by a nomadic family and spent 30 years there searching for her husband. In the end she found that he had died and been given a Sky Burial, but before he died, he saved a Tibet man and given his journals to him to give to his wife. Very lyrical and beautiful. Looking up information online, Tibet has never been recognized as its own country, but is considered part of China.

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Received in the mail from NancyNova. I see a lot of familiar names in the chain of custody. This has been on my wishlist for quite a while -- I read The Good Women of China pre-pandemic and really enjoyed it. This should probably go on Mt. TBR which is as tall as any peak in Tibet -- BUT, I only need one more country in Asia for the 666 Challenge and this is a shorter book than a lot of the other contenders.

Several years ago I read The Good Women of China by the same author and found it very inspiring and fascinating. I added this book to my wishlist and there it sat for nearly a decade. A book friend recently sent me a copy and I thought it would be a good way to finish up the Asia portion of my 666 Reading Challenge. I am not sure exactly what I was expecting in light of the title -- something about Tibet, possibly something about the tradition of sky burial, but the rest was not clear. The blurbs on the cover were not helpful either, some proclaiming this a work of fiction and some a true story. It is all of those things and more.

The story told in this book is one which the author identifies as having been told to her in about the early 1990s by the woman who lived it, who disappeared not long after relating her story. Shu Wen is a young medical student in Suzhou who falls in love with a fellow medical student. Her beloved is called up for military service in the late 1950s by the Chinese government and is later taken for studies in the Tibetan language and culture in order to serve on the front lines in Tibet. They are able to marry before he leaves for Tibet and have but 3 weeks together. About 3 months later, she is informed that he has died in Tibet, but is given no other information. In an act of defiance and determination which is unusual for the time, she insists upon becoming a doctor in the army and being assigned to her husband's former unit and being sent to Tibet to look for him. She is passionate in her belief that he is still alive and she can be reunited with him. Not long after arriving in Tibet, Wen becomes separated by her unit and injured during a mountain snowstorm. She is found and taken in by a nomadic Tibetan family and, with a Tibetan woman who speaks Chinese, begins to travel with them, unsure how to find her lost husband. In the end, she remains with this family for more than 20 years, gradually learning to speak Tibetan and to adapt herself to the rhythm of yak herding on the high grasslands. After many years, the family makes the decision to split up and to help her search for her husband, a quest which takes her through the remotest regions of Tibet over an uncertain period of years. Over time she has adopted the Tibetan Buddhist faith and has embraced almost all of the traditions, but she retains a horror of the concept of sky burial, the surrender of the remains of the dead to be devoured by the eagles and vultures of the high mountains, complete with the smashing of the bones into little bits until nothing remains. Of course, when she is finally able to learn of the fate of her long lost husband, she learns that he was given a sky burial and she must accept her loss and try to return to her old life after more than 30 years. During that time, in a very real sense, Wen herself has undergone a sky burial, with her old skeletal structure of Chinese identity broken into bits and her entire person being devoured to become a part of Tibet.

The book is beautiful and beautifully written. It reads as both an epic myth of larger-than-life-love and a true tale of determination mixed with foolishness and fortune. Much of Wen's life in Tibet is related -- and seemingly lived -- without a sense of true linear time, in tune with the natural cycles and patterns around her. Her love for Kejun, her husband, is the core of her story but is also much like a dream. It is only when she again comes in contact with the Chinese aspects of the world that time seems to move, but the world is strange and disorienting. If the story is true, it is a powerful love story of one woman for her husband and one man for the world at large. If it is not true, still it is one of connection between the past and the present, the simple and the complex, and the variety of people of the world. I definitely feel as if I had a sense of Tibet, its spirit, and its history from this book.

Taking the opportunity to share this book while at the November meet-up. Zippy saw this one on my shelf and requested it by e-mail, so it will go to her.

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Thanks 6 for bringing me this book to todays BCinDC meet-up.Putting this book on my TBR pile. It has gotten great reviews from previous readers.

Releasing this book at the Kensington Day of the Book Festival in the BookCrossing tent manned the ever enthusiastic local BCinDC BookCrossing club.

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