Product Description

Xinran's extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world's most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, a Chinese woman learns that her husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died whilst serving in Tibet. Determined to know what has happened to him, she sets off courageously to join his regiment. To her horror, instead of finding a Tibetan people welcoming their Chinese 'liberators', she walks into a bloody conflict, with the Chinese subject to terrifying attacks from Tibetan guerrillas. Before she can know her husband's fate, she is taken hostage and embarks on a life-changing journey through the Tibetan countryside - a journey that will last twenty years and lead her to a deep appreciation of Tibetan culture in all its beauty and brutality. She meets travellers who tell stories of a stranger given a Tibetan sky burial (his corpse left in the open where sacred eagles come down to take pieces up to paradise). Tragically, when she finally discovers that her husband sacrificed himself to create peace between two fatally different societies, she must carry her knowledge back to a China that, in her absence, has experienced the Cultural Revolution and changed beyond recognition...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21268 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In the world of fiction reviewing, extraordinary is an over-used word. Yet there really is no other way to describe Chinese author Xinran's second book, Sky Burial. It is extraordinary in so many ways--the subject matter, the setting, the central character, but mostly its authenticity and the author's continuing search for the woman whose life is told here.

Sky Burial is the true story of a Chinese woman's 30-year search through Tibet for news of her lost, presumed dead, husband. Xinran is working as a radio journalist on a women's programme when a listener calls in to tell her about Shuwen. Xinran travels hundreds of miles across China to interview her and, over two days, Shuwen opens her heart and reveals her tragic, scarcely imaginable life story. Xinran returns to her life and spends the subsequent 10 years trying to find Shuwen again, researching her story and writing this book--a homage to an ordinary woman's extraordinary life-long search for the truth.

The story is a simple one: Shuwen meets her intelligent, idealistic husband-to-be while they are both training to be doctors. After less than 100 days of marriage, Kejun travels to Tibet as a Chinese army doctor and before long, Shuwen is notified that he has died in an "incident". Shuwen decides to join the army herself, travel to Tibet and find out if he really is dead, and if so, how and why he died.

And then, as if travelling to a closed country like Tibet as a young woman in the 1950s is not difficult enough, Shuwen quickly becomes separated from her unit and, close to death herself, is taken in by a family of Tibetan nomads. Her transformation from Chinese doctor to nomadic Buddhist is a long, painful and at many turns, deeply distressing one.

Sky Burial is a slight book--little more than an extended short story--and yet the ground it covers is immense, not just because of the fascinating glimpse it offers into a land and a people still largely unknown in the West. Despite its tragic themes of loss and survival in one of the world's harshest landscapes, it is an uplifting tale of unwavering loyalty and immeasurable inner strength. --Carey Green

Review
"'An epic of love, loss and wisdom - almost unbearably sad but ultimately uplifting' Mail on Sunday"

From the Publisher
An epic story of Tibet from the author of The Good Women of China
'An epic of love, loss and wisdom - almost unbearably sad but ultimately uplifting' Mail on Sunday

Customer Reviews

Amazingly haunting and unforgettable
If 'Sky Burial' was not a true story, I would have dismissed it as magical fable. Indeed, the story itself is amazing. It details a Chinese army doctor's (Shuwen) journey into Tibet in search of her husband, whom the army claims to be dead. Whilst in Tibet, she gets separated from her army unit together with a Tibetan 'princess' whom she saved from getting killed by her fellow Chinese troops. They are taken in by a Nomad family where Shuwen slowly adjusts to the Tibetan way of life. After several years, Shuwen faces another loss as the Tibetan 'princess', who has helped to bridge the cultural gap between her and the Nomad family, is kidnapped. After several more years of experiencing and learning how to survive the harsh Tibetan terrain, she finally sets off to search for her husband. The story unravels with it haunting customs which are incomprehensible until when you reach the end of the book. I stayed up until 3.00am reading this book until the end, partly because I didn't want to get nightmares and partly because it was so moving. You will definitely need a box of tissues. Shuwen's story is amazingly haunting and unforgettable.

Stunning, astonishing, and remarkable.
'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.

Lost in Tibet
This isn't usually the sort of book which would appeal to me. I bought this book primarily because i had read another book on Tibet recently which fascinated me and i wanted to know more. This book is interesting in that it tells the true story of a Chinese woman in Tibet, and gives the reader a real insight into Tibetan life from a Chinese perspective. Shu Wen enters Tibet in the 1950's in order to look for her young husband, an army doctor who she has been told died in an incident. She cannot imagine at this point that she will end up spending 30 years in Tibet searching for him. What i found refreshing is that it's not complicated to read and it steers clear of political arguments, in fact you don't even really need to know much Chinese or Tibetan history to get into the story as it is first and foremost a story about love, loss and the strength of the human spirit told on a very personal level. Shu Wen's story really is remarkable and the author Xinran has done a superb job in condensing her life story into such a short and engaging read, i think i would have struggled to read a thicker book on the subject purely because it has such hard lessons to relate to us and is quite emotionally draining. The ending left me needing to know more about Shu Wen and her return to China, and for this reason i hope that Xinran is able to catch up with her again and bring us a final instalment.