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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
This really is an epic love story :')
So touching and inspiring!
So touching and inspiring!
I actually would have chosen to give this story 3.5 stars, but that is not an option and I'm not feeling quite generous enough for 4!
It was a very quick read, excellent for my airplane flight, and certainly a nice way to spend a few hours.
I have to say - for some reason I have trouble believing that this is a true story though I cannot articulate why, since real life always outdues anything that can be made up by an author. I want to believe it is, because it's amazing and the stuff of legends.
It was a very quick read, excellent for my airplane flight, and certainly a nice way to spend a few hours.
I have to say - for some reason I have trouble believing that this is a true story though I cannot articulate why, since real life always outdues anything that can be made up by an author. I want to believe it is, because it's amazing and the stuff of legends.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
medium-paced
A wonderful story of love, loss, loyalty, and self.
The supposedly true story told to the author by the woman who spent 30 years in Tibet looking for her missing husband is a window into a world that seems more of a fantasy than some fantasy stories I've read.
Tibet is a mystery to me and the way Shu Wen describes it and its people make it seem magical in a way that is completely foreign to me. It made the slow passage of time and the careful description of events into something that I couldn't put down.
The fact that I knew almost nothing about China in the 1950s and the takeover of Tibet didn't affect the way I enjoyed the story but it definitely made me interested enough to look it up. It's also educational!
I don't know why this book isn't more known, but I will definitely be recommending it as often as I can.
The supposedly true story told to the author by the woman who spent 30 years in Tibet looking for her missing husband is a window into a world that seems more of a fantasy than some fantasy stories I've read.
Tibet is a mystery to me and the way Shu Wen describes it and its people make it seem magical in a way that is completely foreign to me. It made the slow passage of time and the careful description of events into something that I couldn't put down.
The fact that I knew almost nothing about China in the 1950s and the takeover of Tibet didn't affect the way I enjoyed the story but it definitely made me interested enough to look it up. It's also educational!
I don't know why this book isn't more known, but I will definitely be recommending it as often as I can.
I first read this short tale many, many years ago and it has been on my list to re-read ever since. It reads like a work of fiction, beautifully written fiction, but Xinran, a journalist, makes clear that her book is entirely based on a long conversation she had with the real life Shu Wen, a Chinese woman who spent 30 years living in the wilderness of Tibet, while searching for her long lost husband. This experience transforms Wen into someone you would believe was Tibetan herself. Her tale is a fantastic insight into the lives and spirituality of Tibetan people. Wen is completely unaware of the passing of history, when she eventually returns to China, and finds her native land completely unrecognisable. It's more of a travelogue, and an exploration of Tibetan culture and identity, than the 'love story' as it is advertised. But, personally, I think that makes it all the better.
This is a beautifully written book based on the true story of Shu Wen and her lifelong search for her husband Kenjun, who died in Tibet as a martyr and hero in the late 1950s. It is a mesmerizing story, and a testament to what true love and commitment is. At the end of the book, Xinran wrote a letter to Shu Wen in the hopes of finding her once again and continuing their conversation. One can only hope that this occurs...her 30 year search in Tibet is awe-inspiring, and leaves me as a reader hoping to learn more of her life since 1988 when she returned to China.
This is like a continuation of Xinran's Good Women of China, only in this book it's one story, rather than the collection of stories that was in the previous book. There is something enourmously empty and peaceful about this book and the story, it just gives such a feeling of the massive wilderness of Tibet. It's a powerful story, almost to the point where you wonder, can it be true, that this woman would spend 30 years of her life - perhaps the best years of her life - searching for her missing husband. At the start of communism, as a newly wed, Wen's husband joins the army as an army doctor to go to Tibet, and then is reported missing presumed dead. Wen then joins the army herself to go to Tibet to search for him. Her unit doesn't make it, and she ends up living with a Tibetan woman of noble descent, and a nomadic family. Years and years living with this family, completely out of touch with the rest of the world. Chinese communism moves on, the cultural revolution etc, and she had no idea that any of this is happening. It's a bit mind boggling to imagine that kind of state and disconnection from the rest of the world. In some respects its quite enviable, and to be that self-sufficient and your own person must be great. I could quite happily give up quite a few aspects of modern living for that. But I don't think I could cope with cutting myself off from the world completely. I'd miss my books for a start!
But this is a very haunting tale. I think it's something that's going to stay in my mind for quite a while now that I've finished the book. I'd also like to know if Xinran ever managed to catch up with Wen again.
But this is a very haunting tale. I think it's something that's going to stay in my mind for quite a while now that I've finished the book. I'd also like to know if Xinran ever managed to catch up with Wen again.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicide, Violence, Kidnapping, Grief, War