Life unfolds from ‘people’: with remarkable individuals comes a rich life. In Dongbacai Village, Lunang Town, where I built a farm and studio, I made many Tibetan friends. They are full of vitality, with abundant inner strength and physical vigor.

I took part in all their routines: building houses on the pasture, trekking along Route 318 to clear litter, vaccinating yaks in the spring. We hung prayer flags, crossed SE jila Mountain to buy construction materials in Bayi, bought caterpillar fungus, and collected wild mushrooms, etc. All of this was the ordinary life in the West of China. They revealed to me a vibrant western world, not merely the image of Tibet.

The local did not wear traditional robes every day. Instead, they dressed basically with jeans, boots, checkered shirts, and cowboy hats of different styles and colours—some decorated with feathers, some bound with leather cords. Bright turquoise studs, solid gold bracelets and rings, together with their sun-darkened skin, formed a distinctive presence, a magnetism that captivated me completely.

When I joined my Tibetan friends in vaccinating the yaks, they showed me an extraordinary roundup unlike anything I had imagined. With lassos in hand, a dozen men drove the herd into a corner. Some swung their ropes through the air, releasing them at just the right moment to catch the horns, while others rushed forward to hold the yaks down. I once thought I might prove myself by trying to subdue a yak, but that was only wishful thinking—I could not manage it at all. By the end of the day, however, hundreds of yaks had been vaccinated. Covered in mud and worn out from the struggle, I came to see the Tibet before me, and the men themselves, as the truest cowboys of the West.

Part II：Faith

Survival here is not harsh, yet it is filled with challenges, as both humans and animals confront the forces of nature.

When wolves were around, yaks were killed every day. Vultures would descend in flocks to strip the carcasses clean, yet sometimes the vultures would die inexplicably in the wilderness.

In a such of Western World, people who living there always respecting life, devote themselves to goodness, and cleanse the impurities of their hearts.

One day, while I chatting with Ama by the fire, an insect hovered before my eyes. I killed it with a slap without thinking. This is an instinct shaped by the education and habits I had grown up with. Gently, Ama stopped me. She said, “ You don’t need to kill it, you can wave it away. Its life is no less than yours.”

‘Our life are the same.’ In essence, we are no different. What I lacked was that respect for life.

Later, my local brother Awang and I climbed to the highest point of the mountain behind the village to raise prayer flags. Hanging prayer flags is harder than I thought at the plateau. We driving wooden stakes into the ground, hammering in the iron, pulling the lines taut. Finally, with fresh pine branches and tsampa, we lit a bonfire. The thick white smoke with the wind, carrying with it the mingled scent of pine and barley flour—a fragrance of communion and coexistence between human and nature. Awang told me:“ when the wind comes and sets the flags fluttering, good fortune follows.”

Part III：Nature

I ventured deep into the forest, walking through the valleys, with snow-capped peaks in the distance and marshy wetlands close at hand. The pines draped with beard moss.Everything around me stirred with life, as if animated by unseen spirits.

One day, while the snow yet to melt, I rode my motorcycle under the boundless sky to see the sacred peak—— Namcha Barwa. I stopped driving where the snow began, cross the mountain on foot to receiving Namcha Barwa’s benediction. I spent one hour to reach the crest. As I turned the bend, Namcha Barwa revealed herself. Silence fell over the world, and the clouds hung with fragile grace. I met her gaze, and she met mine. The wind pressed gently at my back, carrying me forward. Time and space dissolved—I felt myself adrift in a vast stillness, moving with the pulse of an eternal frequency. In that moment, nature was no longer landscape, but the purest force of being.

Part VI：Life

The ravens of Hoh Xil, the fallen sheep of the wilderness, the yak bones scattered in the forest, the softened wood transformed from the great trees, the wild horses, the beetles—and myself. Everywhere is suffused with the mystery of life. In crossing these desolate places, I let my life affirm their presence. In the end, I will return here—scattered among the trees, the rivers, the flowers, the yaks, the ten thousand things. At that time, a single mote of dust will remain, bearing the trace of life.