Over Christmas break, I read the novel Sky Burial by Xue Xinran. Published in 2004, it is based on the life of Shu Wen, a Chinese woman whose husband, a doctor, disappears several weeks after their marriage on a military expedition to Tibet. Skeptical of the official story of her husband’s disappearance, she travels to Tibet herself and spends the next thirty years searching for her husband. From reading her novel, it is clear that Xinran was a journalist; she writes with a precise and straightforward style, describing the desolate and wild Himalayan landscape clearly and simply. Having only met Shu Wen once, Xinran extrapolates and infers, creating conversations that Shu Wen couldn’t possibly have remembered word for word for decades.
However, Xinran also omits large portions of Shu Wen’s life, and years pass in pages. In the end, Sky Burial takes on a mythic quality. The novel, set in the shadow of the Himalayas, is strangely untethered to reality. Time seems not to exist. Shu Wen spends years living with a nomadic Tibetan family, where her life is measured by changes in fields and weather, not by hours or months. At one point, when she encounters other Chinese people at a Buddhist monastery, she is shocked to learn that it is the 1970s- nearly twenty years after her journey began. Shu Wen spends thirty years of her life with no concept of time and minimal contact with the modern world. This timelessness gives the novel a dreamlike atmosphere. The novel in terms of writing style is simple and clear cut. The story, however, is epic, and the bleakness of both the landscape and Shu Wen’s search is only magnified by the minimalist style.
Sky Burial is a unique book that offers an interesting window into the culture and traditions of Tibet. Through Shu Wen’s experiences, the reader learns about the nomadic lifestyle of Tibetans and the practice of sky burial, a type of funeral where the body is allowed to be devoured by birds. This tradition reflects the importance of nature in Tibetan culture, and this harmony between humans and nature forms the core of the novel. This theme is embodied by a monk in the story who says, “Life starts in nature and returns to nature.” While Sky Burial has the potential to be an unremittingly bleak story of one woman’s loss and undying love, this theme and the emphasis on the endless and redemptive cycle of nature gives the novel a hopeful edge. While Shu Wen at first is disgusted by the notion of a sky burial, she ultimately, after abandoning civilization and living as a nomad for decades, comes to understand the beauty of becoming a part of nature in that way. Similarly, on a larger scale, the novel takes some of the most brutal aspects of Shu Wen’s story and transforms them, revealing beauty in some of the harshest conditions.
Overall, Sky Burial, with its understated writing and powerful story, not only captivates the reader but shows them the renewing force of nature and how even death and being devoured by birds can be life-giving and hopeful.
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