FILE PHOTO: The Snow Mountain and the Homeland by the Chinese writer Yang Zhijun

I was born in Xining, Qinghai Province, on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. My father left his hometown in Henan when he was young to pursue further education. After graduating from university, he ventured westward and settled in Qinghai, dedicating his life to the region and never returning to his hometown. My mother was among the first generation of local Qinghai doctors after 1949. She continued to treat patients into her 70s and remained invested in the medical development of China into her 90s. The plateau where I was born nurtured me with the profound kindness of its snowy mountains at the outset of my life. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and I are of the same essence, both physically and emotionally.

In the past, Xining was encircled by ancient city walls erected to repel the sieges of previous dynasties. These city walls ranged from 300 to over 1,000 years old. My home was situated right beside these walls. In the 1960s, a group of children, myself included, played games on these walls, as if we were racing amidst the enduring beacon fire that had burned for over 1,000 years. As the sun set, Xining appeared tranquil and solitary. The pale golden afterglow illuminated the roofs of bungalows, streets, and alleys. Occasionally, people rode bicycles past, lending the city’s quietude a deeper dimension. Xining was not a large city at that time, and the city walls were surrounded by undulating mountains. Devoid of trees or grass, the rugged mountains were cloaked in coarse sand and stones, enveloping the city in yellow dust whenever the storm swept through.

As a child, much of my joy stemmed from the herders my parents encountered through their work. They would come to Xining for medical treatment and stay at our house, bringing with them unique foods such as clotted cream forming on the surface of boiled milk and yak butter—rare delicacies during times of scarcity. I cherished these honest and unassuming herders, relishing the opportunity to accompany them to the steppes, where I would ride horses, race with herding dogs, learn Tibetan wrestling from their children, search for lambs, lead yaks... In my dreams, my hometown was an expansive steppe, where I stood at the entrance of a tent crafted from black yak hair, repeatedly asking the steppe: Where do I belong? I was meant to be a herder on horseback under the starry sky, clad in a sheepskin robe, scouring the grasslands with a Tibetan mastiff, slumbering with a lamb in my arms, and galloping across the plains while chewing on dried meat!

One day, my father revealed to me that we were descendants of nomads. Our forebears were Mongolians who rode like the wind, and we were wanderers who had traversed foreign lands. My father journeyed westward as if tracing the path of our ancestors. Years after arriving in Qinghai, he discovered that it had once been a pasture for the Mongols. Had we finally returned to our ancestral homeland? The steppe stirred the Mongolian wildness and freedom in my blood. I was captivated by nature. The vast and limitless plain had already taken root in my being long before I could contemplate it as an adult.

“100,000 times recitation of OM MANI PADME HUM [a six-syllabled Sanskrit mantra literally meaning “praise to the jewel in the lotus,” also the most ubiquitous mantra and the most popular form of religious practice in Tibetan Buddhism]” is a spiritual milestone for me. In the summer of 1977, at the age of 22, while working as a reporter for the Qinghai Daily, I journeyed to the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai to interview local herders. Upon requesting to venture further to Zaduo County, the driver directed me to a solitary black yak-hair tent standing on the Dangqu grassland. This unassuming tent on the grassland sparked my initial vision of the snow-capped mountains.

For a month I resided in the tent with a peculiar and serene elderly lady. This gracious woman welcomed me, a young man from afar, with the warmth of the sun and the wind of the grasslands. She treated me as one of her own, much like her son Basang. She imparted to me the Tibetan language, the art of making yak butter, horseback riding, the gathering of yak dung, and the ritual of preserving the sanctity of a river while washing my face by its banks. Upon learning that I had hunted and killed a marmot, she quivered and knelt before the Buddhist hall, reciting “OM MANI PADME HUM” in the hope that the souls on the grassland could find peace. She sweetened my yogurt with scarce sugar, enriched my milk tea with copious amounts of yak butter, and draped me with her sole leather robe on chilly nights. As the days grew colder, the herders migrated to regions where their herds could endure the winter. The Tibetan driver in the county forgot to retrieve me. She forwent the opportunity to move with the other herders and remained with me on the expansive and desolate grassland, awaiting a truck that would arrive at an unknown hour.

The news of the resumption of the national college entrance exams in 1977 reached me. My father’s call was relayed from Xining to Yushu and then to Zaduo. The Tibetan driver finally recollected that there was a reporter in the Dangqu grassland and drove to retrieve me. Upon parting, she bestowed upon me her life’s accumulation—“100,000 times recitation of OM MANI PADME HUM.” I cannot fathom the duration it took her to recite the mantra 100,000 times. It may have been her lifelong accumulation—all the mantras she had recited over 60 or 70 years since childhood. For Tibetan Buddhists, reciting the mantra is a means of amassing merits, which they believe will bring happiness. The “100,000 times recitation of OM MANI PADME HUM” signifies that she had bestowed upon me all her blessings in this world and the next. Such a gift, representing the faith passed down through generations, is immeasurable in monetary value. It became my spiritual genesis. In that moment, I was enlightened and embarked on a profound spiritual journey as a pilgrim. 

Yang Zhijun is the author of The Snow Mountain and the Homeland, one of the full-length winners of the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize.

Edited by REN GUANHONG