Life and Leisure

Moving on to greener pastures

By Gan Tian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-20 07:47

The year was 2006. Jiang Juechi finally decided to leave her Tibetan students on a remote grassland in Sichuan province and head home to East China's Anhui province.

When she finished packing and slipped out of the tent early one morning, she found her students, fellow teachers, Tibetan monks and some local residents, standing there in silence.

"They didn't speak. One man started singing a folk song, and everyone joined in. I couldn't hold back my tears. I knew I had to stay," Jiang says.

Jiang's maiden novel Yak Butter (Su You), published by Gansu People's Fine Arts Publishing House, is a memoir of those times.

The 36-year-old, then an employee at China Petrochemical Corporation in Anhui province, found herself on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway in 2002, and instantly fell in love with the breathtaking snow mountains, azure skies and winding rivers of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

While climbing a mountain near Garze county, Sichuan province, in 2005, a small landslide blocked her way. Trapped in the wilderness, she and her friends met a Tibetan tulku, a highly revered lama, who took them to his temple and offered them food and shelter.

When Jiang tried to express her gratitude, the tulku asked her if she could help some local children with their education.

At the end of 2005, with 8,000 yuan ($1,188) from her family, she set off for the remote grassland in Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, at the western corner of Sichuan province.

"Floods, landslides and avalanches happen almost every day. Many children are orphaned," she says.

She moved in with a Tibetan family, and walked for miles in the grasslands to persuade families to send their children to school, eventually tutoring 27 children in Chinese, mathematics and history.

She kept a diary, writing at night under the light of a yak-butter lamp, as there was no electricity in that area.

She started on her novel, based on her diary, in 2008.

In it, the heroine Mei Duo goes to Tibet as a volunteer and falls in love with a young Tibetan Yue Guang. The two share joys and sorrows, as they try to overcome their cultural and language barriers. In the end, Mei falls ill and has to go back to the city for treatment.

The author says everything in the novel comes from her own experience, including the love story.

When Jiang first arrived in Garze county, she slept on the floor in a tent with 10 people, and made do without running water or electricity.

Twenty days later, because she stank, she took a dip in the river. But it gave her the worst fever of her life, and she had to be rushed to the nearest city for treatment.

She later moved into the school located in the temple run by the tulku, living with the students and three Tibetan teachers, and learning the Tibetan language.

An education can make a big difference to the poverty-ridden lives of the herders, says Jiang, explaining that it equips them to find jobs in towns and support their families.

She once visited a motherless Tibetan family, where the father was hearing-impaired. She tried hard to persuade the father to send his three children to school, but communication was almost impossible.

Jiang spent months in the area, helping the family prepare food, playing with the children and looking after the cattle.

"Finally, he was moved and let me take one child to school. And when that child eventually found a job in town, the whole family moved there and enjoyed better living conditions," Jiang recalls.

However, acute mountain sickness led to chronic anemia and stomachache, forcing her to leave her beloved students in 2008.

She still hopes someone will come forward to carry on her work at the school.

"If one out of 10,000 people who read my book decides to carry on my work, my efforts will be worth it," Jiang says.

China Daily