“Do you want egg?” he asked her. “A sprinkle of osmanthus flowers? How much sugar?”

“Everything, please, and one spoonful of sugar,” Wen replied. As he handed her the bowl, she burst into tears.

“Family problems?” the peddler asked her. “Don’t be sad. Just take life a day at a time, and the days will pass quickly enough.”

Drinking the sweet rice soup, now mixed with her tears, Wen struggled to compose herself.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“I came here ten years ago,” the peddler said. “I was no good for anything else so it was the bamboo clappers for me. But it’s not bad work and every day there’s something new. Even the road I walk down is different every year.”

Wen asked him if he knew her sister and her parents and described to him the house they used to live in. The peddler gave it some thought.

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “In the ten years I’ve lived here, this area has been knocked down and rebuilt three times. The first time was during the ‘Three Constructions,’ or whatever it was. Then they built a road and a bridge, only to pull them down again. After that they sold a big chunk of land to Singapore. Many people have come and gone around here. These days you hear fewer and fewer local accents.”

He went back to banging his clappers.

Wen stood in the middle of the street, paralyzed by the strangeness of her hometown. She was so absorbed in thought that she heard neither the sound of the clappers nor the noise of the cars and bicycles rushing past her only inches away. All she had now were her memories. Would she have the courage to embark on a second search so late in her life? If not, where should she go?

She put her hand into the pocket of her robe where she kept the photograph of Kejun. Laying her fingers on the image that had shared the sweetness, the bitterness, and the sweeping changes of her life for so many years, she whispered, “ Om mani padme hum.”

Up above, a family of geese flew toward home.

Here, there were neither sacred vultures nor sky burials.

A LETTER TO SHU WEN

Most respected Shu Wen,

Where are you?

For ten years this book has been in my heart, maturing like wine. Now, at last, I can present it to you.

I hope that, sometime, you will be able to hear the gasps of admiration that the beauty of your story inspires.

I hope that, sometime, you will be able to answer the countless questions that I have for you. At the very least, I would like to know what has become of Zhuoma and Tiananmen, of Saierbao and her family.

I have spent many years searching for you, hoping that we might sit together again in the tea-scented Yangtze delta so that you can tell me the story of your life after Sky Burial.

Dear Shu Wen, if you see this book and this letter, I earnestly beg you to contact me through my publisher as soon as possible.

Xinran

London, 2004

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sky Burial is the result of years spent learning how to understand and feel Shu Wen’s love, the spiritual life of Tibetans, and how different culture, time, life, and death can be for different people.

I don’t know how to thank the following people enough: Julia Lovell (who carried a “football player” in her body) and Esther Tyldesley, whose translation allowed Sky Burial to be read in English; my editor at Chatto & Windus for helping this book find its readers; Mr. Hao-chong Liu, who spent months helping me with my research and fact-checking in China; Toby Eady, my “bossy” husband with his professional mind and lover’s heart; and Random House, booksellers, and you.

I cannot say thanks enough to you who have taken the time to read my books with your interest in and love of China and Chinese women. I have received responses to The Good Women of China from all over the world, so full of open hearts and personal memories that I should now have a book called The Good Women of the World.

No one likes crying, but tears water our souls. So perhaps my thanks should be to allow you to cry for the Chinese women in my books…

Xinran Xue

Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958 and was a successful journalist and radio presenter in China. In 1997 she moved to London, where she began work on her seminal book about Chinese women’s lives, The Good Women of China, which became an international bestseller. Sky Burial is her second book.