Sky Burial
Xinran Xue
 The novel involves a Chinese woman, Shu Wen, retelling her life in Tibet to Xinran in a tea shop in Suzhou. In the 1950s, as China revels in its unification under communism, Shu Wen, a doctor, marries a military doctor who gets orders to go into Tibet to pacify the Tibetan people and bring them under Chinese rule. The reputation of the Tibetans from the government paints them as sympathetic and welcoming to the Chinese, but gradually she learns of their resistance to subjugation. She is informed that her husband has gone missing, and against the wishes of her family and friends, she leaves her comfortable life in Suzhou to join the Army and search for him in Tibet. Her unit encounters a Tibetan woman near death in the highlands, and Shu Wen decides to treat the woman and take her away from her soldiers, who suspect she is a scout or a resistance fighter. Shu Wen goes to live with a nomadic family, and over 30 years learns the Tibetan way of life and gradually loses her sense of Chinese identity while quietly hoping for news of her husband's fate. Years after joining the nomads, she encounters Chinese soldiers who tell her about a doctor who sacrificed himself after his unit wounded a Tibetan in a skirmish in order to prevent the Tibetans from retaliating. After going to a nomad gathering, she meets an old sage, who tells her that he was the man her husband had treated, and in the end he was killed and disposed of in the sky burial, a tradition of the Tibetans. The sage said he would continue to sing the praises of the doctor as long as he lived, and Shu Wen finds peace. She returns to Suzhou, where Xinran encounters her, still searching for her relatives and eking out a modest living.