By A.J. Griffiths-Jones – Renowned late-night radio presenter Xinran has encountered many tragic stories of women living in the People’s Republic of China, but one in particular brought back memories from her childhood and laid open the fascinating rituals of sky burial in Tibet.

A.J. Griffiths-Jones

At the time of hearing about this unusual tradition, in 1963, a time when little was known about Tibetan lifestyle, Xinran was just five years old, and it wasn’t until three decades later that she would encounter a tale that moved her to tears. Shu Wen was an elderly woman when the pair met in a Suzhou tea house, and the story of her life is no less than extraordinary. It took two days to recount her experiences and, as Xinran confessed later, it was the most haunting conversation in her vast experience as a journalist.

This moving book begins in 1949, when Communism took hold in China and the year that Shu Wen met her future husband, Kejun, in medical school. The country was still recovering from the previous decade’s civil war between the Nationalists and Communists and Chairman Mao was beginning to rebuild his Motherland.

It was during this time that the Chinese Army was desperate for surgeons to care for the wounded and Kejun was drafted to his first posting. The couple were separated for two years. Upon Kejun’s return the couple married, but just three weeks later his call-up papers arrived, and he was sent to Tibet.

A few months later Shu Wen received news that her beloved spouse was dead. Haunted by her yearning for Kejun and the fact that she was not able to lay his body and soul to rest, Shu Wen did the unthinkable, she embarked on a harrowing journey to Tibet.

As Shu Wen recounts her movements and experiences to Xinran during their emotional exchange, the reader cannot help but be filled with empathy for this brave woman, yet the most remarkable part is that it took Shu Wen thirty years to find the answers that she was looking for.

Traversing the often wild and desolate plains of the Tibetan landscape, Shu Wen was greeted with open arms by the various communities of nomads, being invited to share their daily lives and tribulations in exchange for her medical knowledge.

It is hard to imagine how she first came to encounter the native Tibetans, having limited shared language and quite diverse culture, but Shu Wen survived, her determination and loyalty won out, despite being at the mercy of both fate and politics.

To return to the title, Sky Burial refers to the Tibetan Buddhist custom of an appointed monk or curator dismembering a corpse and leaving the remains to the disposal of vultures, who pick the bones clean. It is believed that the soul has already left the mortal body, and the sacred birds will carry what is left towards heaven. It was this ritual that Shu Wen believed was the final ending for Kejun’s body, hence her remarkable quest to seek the truth.

Xinran tells Shu Wen’s story with compassion and does not deviate from the truth, although some of the many hardships that this Chinese woman endured in the name of love make it tough reading. Xinran also gives us insight into the China of old, relating how Tibet was an almost unknown landscape and how customs bore little resemblance to the lives of their Chinese counterparts.

It was, and in many areas still is, a country steeped in tradition and folklore, closed to the outside world and untarnished by modern-day living. After their emotional meeting, the two women lost contact and at the end of the book Xinran makes an emotional plea for Shu Wen to contact her.

It’s a letter that doesn’t fail to bring a lump to your throat and the mystery of what happened to Shu Wen after sharing her ordeal is a heartbreaking thought.

The author has written many books about the women of China, this being one of her finest, with others touching on taboo subjects such as incest, rape and the very real issue of unwanted female babies, a topic that continues to rear its head in modern Communist China today.

Each book is devoted to the young mothers and ageing aunts who have been brave enough to share their real-life experiences, many anonymously through Xinran’s radio show, and pays tribute to a culture that is both unfamiliar and difficult to comprehend in the Western world.