In 2021, I drove alone along Highway 315. For an entire day the road stretched endlessly, bordered only by barren desert. The emptiness was so absolute it felt as though the world had collapsed into just me. I had never known such silence.

By a lakeside I stopped, gazing at the distant mountains as the wind whistled sharply past my ears. When I turned around, a single yellow flower caught my eyes. Ablaze in the wasteland, almost defiant. I stood transfixed, overwhelmed by a sudden, inexplicable tenderness.

Drawn toward that fragile presence, I crossed the desert and sat beside it. We kept each other a company for a long time, the flower and I, watching the lake, the mountains, the restless clouds drifting overhead.

When the air grew cold, I rose to leave. It was our first and last encounter. Years have passed, yet I still carry that moment – the blaze of a yellow flower seared into me: brilliant, radiant, unforgettable.

Keywords：Yuezhong Farm

I lived on the Lunang construction farm, where daydreaming wove itself into daily life. In summer, the hills were blanketed with wildflowers swaying in the breeze, and I could lose myself in a single blossom, watching it endlessly.

When boredom set in, I sat on the hillside, eyes fixed on distant yaks. Whole herds drifted across the grassland slowly, yet my eyes lingered on just one, gazing for what felt like an eternity.

The mountains held natural hot springs. Each visit meant a long drive, and with every season the road unfolded new sceneries that compelled me to stop: a lone pine, a passing cloud, a circling vulture. Each time I lingered, reluctant to move on.

In the end, I realized I had always been staring at a flower, a yak, a tree, a leaf, some nameless thing, in its presence, far longer than I ever intended.

Keywords: Ama

One day, my Tibetan friend’s Ama (grandmother) passed away. Her body was offered to the sky in a celestial burial, lifted heavenward by flocks of vultures. This lingered with me for a while.

That night, as I stood on the farm beneath a canopy of stars, I wondered: where had her dispersed remains gone? The vultures had consumed her flesh, carried her into their flight to every corner of the world. When her flesh was digested and returned to the earth, those particles scattered and become part of the soil beneath my feet.

As I drifted deeper into thought, a shooting star cut across the sky, disappearing behind a tree. In that same instant, a vulture rose into the air, guiding my gaze upward, toward the Milky Way.

Keywords: across the span of my gaze

The little yellow flower—the one among countless wild blossoms in the fields.

The lone pine tree by the roadside.