Two days earlier, the commune had sent people round to inform everyone that the men of each tent were required to travel into town for study sessions on Mao Zedong Thought. The morning Lunzhu left, he swatted the naked Gongzha awake and told him to take care of his sister and three brothers and to watch over the production team’s sheep. He said that he’d be back in a few days and would bring Gongzha a fruit sweet. At the promise of a sweet as his reward, Gongzha nodded at his father without even wondering whether he was old enough to take on such responsibilities.
Gongzha’s mouth watered whenever he thought about fruit sweets. Two years ago, when a group of Han men had come to the grassland prospecting for oil, he and some of the other children had gone along to see what they were doing, and the men had given them each a sweet. Gongzha had been desperate to make the sweet last as long as possible. He would get the sweet out and lick it twice, then close his eyes and let the sweetness roll off his tongue, slip down his throat and spread through his body. Then he’d wrap the sweet up again and put it back in his chuba’s front pocket. The sweet had lasted a month. It was Gongzha’s favourite childhood memory.
Lunzhu smiled and rubbed Gongzha’s bare head. Then he put on his old sheepskin chuba, opened the thick door flap and went out. Gongzha raced after him in his bare feet, calling after his father’s horse, ‘Bala, don’t forget to buy me a sweet!’
‘Don’t worry, son!’ Lunzhu waved to his woman and children by the tent, whipped his horse and clattered off into the distance.
Gongzha went back to the tent and stuffed his feet into his boots. His father had made them for him two years ago and he’d long since grown out of them. His toes poked out the front and both big toes were black with dirt. The adults had no time to worry about their children’s feet: during the day they were busy working, and at night they had to study Mao Zedong Thought. When winter came, they just packed their boots with wool; as long as the wind didn’t get in, they would be alright.
Dawa made butter tea and gave each child a small piece of half-cooked meat. Gongzha finished the tea in a few gulps and tucked the meat into his chuba’s front pocket. He knew they would soon be out of food. Aba had had to spend a lot of time studying recently and wasn’t sure when he’d be able to go hunting again. Gongzha took his slingshot from the basket by the door and with a word to his mother raced off to the commune’s sheep pen.
Today it was the turn of their tent and another tent to tend the sheep. Shida, the boy from the other tent, joined Gongzha at the enclosure. Shida’s tent had three men to look after him and his brother – his father and two uncles – but they’d also gone to the study session in town, and Shida’s older brother had joined the army last year, so Shida was also looking after the sheep today, in place of the grown-ups.
He was a bit older than Gongzha and looked almost like a small adult, but the two of them were like brothers. They often gathered yak pats, tended sheep and searched for wolf cubs together. At the sheep pen, they smiled at each other and whistled for their sheepdogs, who were playing in the distance. The dogs came bounding up, tongues lolling. Gongzha’s dog, Duoga, was brown; Shida’s was black and was called Duopuqing.
The boys crouched down and petted the dogs. Then they opened the gate of the enclosure and the sheep flooded out, keen to roam free after being penned in all night. Duopuqing and Duoga were well trained. They kept the sheep together, taking one side of the flock each, racing to the front or back and rounding up any strays, following the lead ram along the side of the lake to the grazing area, which had lots of marsh grass.
Once the sheep began to graze, the boys had nothing else to do, so they decided to collect yak pats. The herders used the manure from their livestock for fuel. Not many shrubs survived the harsh conditions of the grasslands, and those that did grew very slowly and were far too puny to use for firewood. Instead, they used yak pats to keep them warm in winter and for boiling water in summer.
Shida pulled a lambskin pouch from his chuba, took out a piece of meat and handed it to Gongzha. Gongzha accepted it with a smile and stashed it in his chuba. Then he picked up his manure fork and the two boys took a slope each. Gongzha wanted to get up the mountain before the sun climbed too high and before he’d used up all the energy from his two bowls of butter tea. If he collected enough yak pats for tomorrow, maybe Ama would let him go to the tent school for half a day. Gongzha longed to be able to go to school, to sit with other children his age and learn about things he’d never heard of. But his family was too large and too poor, so they needed him to work. It was different for Shida, and Gongzha envied him that.
When his stomach began to growl, Gongzha straightened his back, tightened his belt, and called to Shida. Shida was already lying spread-eagled on the other slope; when he heard Gongzha, he waved. Gongzha smiled, put down his bag, sat on the grass, pulled out the piece of meat and began to nibble at it slowly. He knew from experience that you could trick yourself into feeling full if you nibbled your food rather than wolfed it down in one go.
As he sat there, he watched the sheep down below. The two dogs were clearly tired as well. They no longer kept close to the sheep but had found a place to curl up and nap. Cuoe Lake looked clear and dark, like a beautiful piece of ancient jade, reflecting dazzling beams of light. A yak-skin boat was coming across the water towards them, gentle ripples spreading out from its sides. It was the team boat, the one that ferried the students to school and back twice a day. It ran at fixed times and between fixed locations. As he watched it, Gongzha imagined being on board. Today was Saturday, so only the students in their final year had school.
He began to feel drowsy. The afternoon sun was making his forehead tingle. He spread his sheepskin chuba on the ground and lay down to take a nap; he would get back to work again later. Perhaps tomorrow he could go on that yak-skin boat himself. He had long forgotten the things he’d learnt the last time he went; if he didn’t go again soon, he might not be able to keep up.
He had only just shut his eyes when he heard a girl yelling from the other side of the mountain. She sounded frightened.
‘Help! Help! Is anyone there? Come and help me, quick!’
It was Cuomu’s voice. Cuomu was Production-Team Leader Danzeng’s daughter and she was different from the other grassland girls. Her face was white, not ruddy like theirs. Zhaduo, Cuoe Temple’s former living Buddha, was her uncle. He used to teach Cuomu her letters at the temple and then she would teach Gongzha. That was why, even though Gongzha had only ever attended school a few times, he could write the thirty letters of the Tibetan alphabet. It was tragic how Zhaduo was derided now as a cow-ghost snake-spirit, forced to live on the edge of the encampment with a broken leg, all alone in the world. Gongzha often went with Cuomu to take him food and fuel when no one was paying attention, so the two of them had become close.
When Gongzha heard her shouts, he rolled over, leapt up, and without even stopping to put on his chuba, dashed round to the other side of the mountain. When he got there and looked down, he was terrified. Cuomu was trapped on a crag: a sheer precipice dropped away steeply below her, and her only route back up the mountainside was blocked by a hungry-looking snow leopard, not three metres from her, who was looking for a way down.
Snow leopards were smart. This one was well aware that if it moved too quickly, both it and the girl would fly off the precipice in a cascade of rocks and scree. So it was clawing its way carefully down the loose shingle. It was this sound that had alerted Cuomu and made her yell out in a panic. She had also come up the mountain to gather yak pats. Distracted, she’d got stranded on the crag, not expecting to meet a leopard.
Gongzha had no time to hatch a plan. He simply picked up whatever rocks he could find and hurled them at the snow leopard. The snow leopard whirled around, saw Gongzha, snarled and sprang at him. Gongzha drew his knife from his belt and raced back towards the other side of the mountain, yelling, ‘Duoga! Duoga, come quickly, there’s a leopard!’
How could a child outrun a famished snow leopard? Within seconds, the snow leopard pounced and sank its teeth deep into Gongzha’s calf. A stab of heart-stopping pain made his head spin and he almost fell to the ground.
Gongzha had been at his father’s side in the wilderness since he was small and there was no animal he had not encountered. He knew that when man and snow leopard met, one of them had to die. He twisted round and stabbed blindly with all his strength, sinking his blade into the snow leopard’s back. With a yowl of pain, the snow leopard loosened its grip on his leg and prepared to strike again. Gongzha didn’t have time to pull his knife out. He quickly rolled down the slope. But the snow leopard wasn’t about to give up on a meal it was close to finishing. It shook itself vigorously and the knife popped out and dropped to the ground. Then it sprang after Gongzha, the loose stones beneath its paws clattering down the mountainside.
Gongzha’s cries for help had raised Duoga and Duopuqing. Barking wildly, they raced over and just in time managed to plant themselves between Gongzha and the snow leopard. The leopard and the dogs stopped in their tracks, dust swirling around them, and glared at each other like tigers.
The fight erupted without warning. It was unclear whether the snow leopard or the dogs had attacked first, but within seconds there was a whirl of biting and flying dust. The animals on the grassland all had their own rules: they knew who they could attack and who to avoid. The snow leopard was starving, otherwise it would not have risked its life in a fight. If there had just been one dog, it would not have hesitated, but it could only defeat two dogs with effort. It assumed that if it killed one of them, the other would back off. That way it could conserve its energy and end the fight quickly. But the two dogs had realised they were no match for this leopard and had decided to play the long game: one fought for a time, while the other stood by and barked supportively; when it got tired, they switched places. The snow leopard was fighting for its life on an empty stomach and its energy reserves were quickly used up. It did not have the strength to continue.
In the distance, a pack of mastiffs was yelping and tearing towards them. Dogs were the most group-minded of the grassland animals: if a dog heard a commotion even from five kilometres away, it would always come and help. Now the leopard knew it would not get its delicious meal, so it retreated hastily, disappearing up the mountainside.
There was no way a pack of mastiffs, masters of the grassland, would let an exhausted snow leopard vanish from under their noses. The quick-witted sheepdogs glanced at each other. Duoga chased after the leopard while Duopuqing veered off in a different direction. Duoga caught the leopard and bit its hind leg and the leopard impatiently turned and began to fight again. Just then, Duopuqing reappeared higher up the slope, cutting off the snow leopard’s exit. Below them, the pack of mastiffs had finally arrived and began encircling them to the left and right.
Gongzha seized the chance to go back round the slope and rescue the petrified Cuomu.
The battle on the mountainside was over very quickly. The snow leopard’s body lay on the sand and rocks and the dogs stood baying at the sky, the clear, high sound reverberating across the grassland.
Gongzha patted his dog and praised its bravery. When he looked up, he noticed a bear with a white circle on its head watching them with interest from a distant mountaintop. ‘Kaguo!’ he shouted. This was the first time he’d said her name. After his close encounter with death, Gongzha’s heart was full of joy and he wanted to share his happiness with someone. He’d been familiar with Kaguo since he was small – she was like an old friend, and he couldn’t resist calling out her name.
‘What are you yelling?’ Cuomu tugged at his arm and tilted her small face towards his.
Gongzha smiled. ‘“Kaguo” – that’s the bear’s name!’
‘A bear?’ Cuomu asked fearfully. ‘Where?’
‘There, on that mountaintop!’ Gongzha pointed into the distance.
Cuomu looked up in the direction he was pointing, but she didn’t see anything.
When they returned to the encampment, the news of their encounter spread fast. Team Leader Danzeng embraced Gongzha and loudly praised him as the little hero of the grassland. He said he would go to the commune and ask that he be commended.
Danzeng carried Gongzha back to his tent. Dawa had already spread a sheepskin on the couch. She made her son sit on it, then with hot water and a cloth she cleaned the bite wound on his leg and rubbed butter on it. Afterwards, she set about boiling water to serve to the other herders. Grassland mothers learnt early to take their children’s injuries in their stride. It was normal for a child to pick up several on their journey to adulthood; their scars were like milestones that had to be passed, each one signifying that they were growing up. How else could a child mature into a courageous herder of the grassland?
The leopard was suspended from a wooden beam and a fire was lit beneath it. Two young men began to skin it with small knives under the watchful eye of several elders, who stood nearby and offered advice. ‘Careful! Be careful, don’t damage the pelt.’ Later, the pelt would be cured by rubbing it with butter and tsampa. After some discussion, it was agreed that the pelt would then be presented to the Commune Secretary, who would go to the county town and ask for a commendation for the grassland’s little hero.
Nights on the grassland were very quiet. Apart from dog-driving, people had nothing else to entertain them. So the story of how a child had rescued a girl from the jaws of a snow leopard spread quickly and took on almost mythic proportions. Even people who lived five kilometres away heard about the young leopard-fighting hero Gongzha who lived beside Cuoe Lake. Wherever Gongzha went, he was asked to tell his story. No matter that the herders had heard it many times already, they couldn’t get enough of it. Cuomu watched her hero from afar, her dark eyes shining. Gongzha had saved her life, and the little girl’s heart was stirring.
*
The news of Gongzha’s heroism soon reached the town, fifty kilometres away, where someone told Gongzha’s father and urged him to hurry home. Late at night, five days after the snow-leopard attack, as the moon rose over the tops of the tents, Gongzha’s father duly returned to the encampment. But he had not walked home. He’d been carried. And now he was laid out on the frozen, sandy ground.
Dragging his wounded leg, Gongzha limped out of the tent to find his mother clasping his father’s corpse. Her hair was wild and she was shrieking. His sister and three brothers were hanging onto her leg, wailing helplessly.
The herders gathered round, murmuring.
‘We got caught in a landslide – a huge boulder rolled down the mountain. Oh, it’s too sad.’
‘It was lucky we managed to run so fast, otherwise it would have been over for us too.’
‘How will they live – and the children so small! No man will be willing to take on so many children.’
‘That’s true. Beautiful as she is, that’s not going to help her now. It’ll be hard to find another man.’
The moon that night was exceptionally cold and mournful, the wind exceptionally bitter.
Two women went over and lifted Dawa to her feet. She had to accept that her man was dead, they said. She should think about having the sky burial soon, so that his soul would not get restless.
Team Leader Danzeng had two young men stay and help but dismissed everyone else. Gongzha stood by the tent flap and listened to Danzeng and his mother talking quietly.
‘I’ll get someone to take him up to the sky-burial altar tomorrow, but that’s all I can do. We won’t be able to get anyone to chant mantras for him – no one would dare. The commune is determined to pursue its Four Olds policy, and the lamas are struggling to fit in. What do you think?’
‘I’ll do as you say. Him going like this, leaving five children and the smallest still not weaned… How will we live?’ His mother started sobbing again.
‘Don’t cry. Gongzha is growing up fast – and he saved my daughter’s life. Do you think I can just stand by and watch you all suffer? As long as there is food in my tent, I won’t let you go hungry.’
That night, while his mother was coaxing his siblings to sleep despite her red, swollen eyes, Gongzha leant on a stick for support and went outside to sit with his father. Lunzhu’s tanned, ruddy face looked as if he were asleep. There was a trickle of frozen blood at the corner of his mouth. Gongzha stretched out his finger and picked it away. His tears dripped onto the back of Lunzhu’s cold, stiff hand.
The moon continued to shine clear and mournful. Gongzha felt his own bones turning to ice. He gripped his father’s hand. It was clenched into a fist and Gongzha began to gently unfurl his fingers. To his surprise, lying in the palm of his father’s hand was a fruit sweet. It was wrapped in clear plastic with a flower printed on it. Gongzha had seen a sweet like that before, placed by an elder in front of the bodhisattvas in the temple. The sight of it had made the children’s mouths water. Cuomu had said that this kind of sweet cost one fen. One fen! The herders rarely had any actual money; when they needed something, they would trade something for it. If you added one fen to another, you could buy a box of matches.
Gongzha carefully picked up the sweet, peeled off the wrapper and licked it. He shut his eyes and let that sweet taste spread across his tongue and slowly slide down his throat. After a long while, he wrapped it up again and put it in his chuba. His tears fell in fat drops.
From now on he was the man of the tent. It was down to him to take care of Ama and his siblings.
*
Danzeng used his authority as Production-Team Leader to order people to do this and that. Under his instruction, just after dawn the following day two young men tied Lunzhu onto the funeral master’s back. Carrying the butter lamp used to light the way for the souls of the dead, they began to walk towards the sky altar at the foot of the snow mountain.
Despite his injured leg, Gongzha ignored his mother’s shouts and limped after them. The lamp moved slowly across the plain, its light receding into the distance. He followed as best he could, but when the light disappeared into a fold in the mountain, he headed for a nearby hill and clambered to the top on his hands and knees. From the summit, he watched as the lamp reappeared, ascending and then descending as it wound its way slowly into the mountains. Finally he saw the curl of incense smoke rising. They had reached the sky-burial altar.
The encampment’s dogs, wild and domesticated, also began to race towards the sky altar, baying hungrily as they went. When a man didn’t have enough food for himself or his tent, he couldn’t be expected to feed his dogs, so the dogs fended for themselves. Once they’d all but exhausted the supply of mice and rabbits on the grassland, they began to look to the sky altar for meat, where they quietly set about eating its corpses. Traditionally, it was the vultures who fulfilled that role, picking the corpses clean and accompanying the dead on their last journey. But the dogs had driven the vultures away. There was a death every two or three days at this time of year, but even that wasn’t enough to fully satisfy the dogs, though it was better than nothing.
As the incense smoke spiralled, Gongzha saw the vultures circling. The brave ones darted down but were quickly driven off by the dogs. He couldn’t bear to watch. Aba had loved Duoga, his dog. Whenever he went hunting, he would always take his gun with the forked stand, and Duoga. And when they came back two or three days later with a wild ass or an antelope, he would always save his dog a big piece of meat, saying that Duoga had worked harder than he had. If Gongzha were to see Duoga in that pack of dogs around his father’s corpse, the pain would be unspeakable.
He wiped away his tears and began to make his way back to the encampment. At the foot of the mountain he ran into Cuomu’s Uncle Zhaduo. He was wearing regular clothes, white hair was growing out of his once-shaven head, and one leg was lame. He was carrying a basket, as if he was going to collect yak pats.
Gongzha yielded the path out of habit and waited for him to go by. This was what his father had taught him to do: when you saw a monk, it didn’t matter what age he was, you were deferential. Monks were learned people, they practised Buddhism and deserved to be respected. It was just that recently, all of the grassland people’s customs had changed. Monks had become cow-ghost snake-spirits, and temples were seen as part of the Four Olds. The elders who had faithfully worshipped the Buddha seemed overnight to have ingested some kind of inflammatory medicine. They became frighteningly violent, brandishing the Little Red Book in raised fists behind a crowd of adolescents, bellowing slogans Gongzha didn’t understand as they rushed into the temple, driving the monks out of the prayer hall, then bringing out the bodhisattvas, smashing them and throwing them into the lake.
Zhaduo glanced at him and continued walking, his back hunched and his head hanging low. When they passed each other, the old man said softly, ‘He’s gone to Shambhala, to heaven.’
Gongzha was startled and wanted to ask him what he meant, but Zhaduo walked quickly by and clearly didn’t want to speak to him. Gongzha carried on home with a heavy heart. When he passed Zhaduo’s lonely tent, he noticed the old man had put a small incense burner by the door and lit a stick of incense. People only did that to commemorate a deceased family member. Gongzha’s heart hurt; Zhaduo was honouring his father’s dead spirit.
There was no chanting of mantras and no one held a ceremony to help Lunzhu’s soul find peace. Ama also placed a small burner by the door of their tent and lit a stick of incense three times a day. Seven days later she gathered up the burner and Aba disappeared from their lives completely.
*
With the death of his father, Gongzha became the encampment’s youngest head of a household. Whenever the production team was dividing up supplies or having a meeting, he went to represent his family, and his signature in shaky Tibetan script replaced his father’s fingerprint.
The family had not had any meat in two days. Ama took the younger children to pick wild plants, which she stewed with yak bones that had been used so many times there was no fat left on them. The herders were used to eating meat, and when they ate anything else they got diarrhoea; the women began to look sickly, and the men lost their vigour and sat around listlessly in the sun like old people.
As Gongzha was coming past Cuomu’s tent on his way back from collecting yak pats, he heard her mother yelling, ‘Why is it only you that’s taking an interest? No one else is bothered! Isn’t it just so you can see that face the colour of egg-white and that waist as soft as butter? Why don’t you just move over there? The tent is certainly big enough – are you not man enough for it?’
‘She’s a widow and I’m the team leader. What’s wrong with asking after her? Your yak-mouth talks too much!’
‘My yak-mouth talks too much? That wild yak’s mouth doesn’t talk at all! Why don’t you go be the head of the wild yak’s household?’
The tent flap flew open and Danzeng plunged out with a leg of mutton in his hands. When he saw Gongzha, he was startled and gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Your auntie is crazy. Let’s go!’
‘Uncle Danzeng, don’t worry about us. Things aren’t easy for your family either.’ Such grown-up words sounded a little odd coming from someone so small.
‘No matter how hard things are for us, they’re nothing like as hard as they for you. Child, don’t be angry at your auntie. That’s just her way. Let’s go.’ Danzeng put his hand on Gongzha’s shoulder and they walked along the lakeshore towards his tent.
At the tent, Dawa invited Danzeng to sit and passed him some clear tea; there hadn’t been any butter for a long time.
‘I talked to the local PLA unit – they’ll be looking for soldiers this winter. You should get Gongzha to enlist; at least they’ve got food there.’
Dawa glanced at Gongzha doubtfully. ‘He’s still so young, will they accept him?’
‘Why not? He’s from a serf family, his father’s dead, his family is in difficulties and needs help, and let’s not forget, he’s already saved someone’s life. If the army doesn’t want someone like him, who do they want?’
Dawa sighed. ‘When he’s gone, there won’t even be anyone to collect yak pats.’
‘I won’t go and be a soldier, Ama. I’ll go hunting and look after you all,’ Gongzha said, putting the meat Danzeng had brought into a basket.
‘Good for you, Gongzha – you’ve got deep feelings and you’re loyal. You’re our Cuoe Grassland hero. But you can enlist with an easy heart. I’ve already talked to the production team. They know how difficult things are for your family and they’ll try and do something to help.’
Not long after, Danzeng went to the town and when he came back he told Gongzha that he’d signed him up. He just needed to wait for his notice to arrive.
Gongzha worked harder than ever. As well as gathering up each day’s yak pats, he made time to shoot wild asses. Everyone knew his family’s situation, so they turned a blind eye to his private hunting.
*
Springtime was the busiest part of the year on the grassland because of the lambing. The lambing always happened in a special pasture in another valley. Changtang’s river valley lay between two mountains and from a distance it didn’t look that big, but when you were there, it seemed to go on for ever, and the landscape changed around every bend. The herders had used the same lambing pasture for many years. There was lots of water there, it was warm and sheltered from the wind, and because it was fenced off during the summer, the animals hadn’t trampled it, so the grass was soft and plentiful. This made it perfect for the ewes, who could feast on the grass and produce lots of milk for their lambs, which is what they needed before they got big enough to go grazing out on the grassland.
The team had issued the order to move the evening before. The herders were to drive the sheep directly to the lambing pasture. Individual families were responsible for moving their own tents to the new encampment, and they had to move within a day.
The cart hadn’t been used since the previous summer and its wheels had rusted. Gongzha repaired it and then went into the tent to bring out the things his mother had packed. The older two of his younger brothers used all their energy to bring out the pots and baskets of belongings. His youngest brother was put in charge of his sister, who could not yet walk, and was to make sure she didn’t fall off the couch.
After moving everything out, Gongzha and his mother took down the tent poles and began to roll up the tent. The yak-wool tent was good at keeping the wind out, but it was heavy and even though mother and son spent a long time trying, they couldn’t quite roll the whole thing up. In the end they stuffed it onto the truck, along with the small wooden chest and the stove. To make sure their baskets of belongings stayed on the cart and the pots and bowls didn’t fall out, they covered everything with a yak-wool blanket and tied it down with a yak-hair rope.
Since her man’s death, life had become increasingly difficult for Dawa; she began to realise that a family without a man was like a tent without a main pole. A number of men had approached her – some with good intentions, some not – and had taken to hanging around the tent at night, unwilling to leave. But Dawa had her own plans.
The new site for the encampment was in a flat part of the mountain valley. When you looked up, you could see the peaceful blue of Cuoe Lake.
By the time Gongzha and his mother had finished putting up their tent there, cooking smoke was already rising from the other tents. Cuomu came to help them move in and arrange their things. After Gongzha had risked his life to save her from the leopard, Cuomu had begun to see him in a different light. As time passed, new and different feelings crept into the hearts of the two friends who’d spent their childhood chasing each other across the plains. Children matured early on the grassland and girls were considered adults at twelve. Cuomu and Gongzha were at the age for love. They both had feelings for one another, but neither had yet spoken of this.
After Cuomu left, Gongzha had something to eat and fell asleep. When he woke in the middle of the night to get a drink and did not see his mother, he didn’t think anything of it; he assumed she had gone to urinate.
Dawa came back just before dawn; her hair was tousled and there was a twinkle in her eye. She called to her son to get up and told him he didn’t need to collect yak pats that morning and that he should go to the other side of the lake for a half-day of school.
Gongzha’s eyes widened. He must have heard wrong. ‘Ama, if I don’t collect yak pats today, what will we burn tomorrow?’
‘We have yak pats. You go ahead. It’ll be good for you to learn some words!’ Dawa laughed and began to boil the tea water.
Gongzha raced over to where they stacked the yak pats outside the door and, sure enough, there was a pile already there.
‘When did you go and get them?’
‘Your Uncle Danzeng brought them. Alright, go quickly after you’ve eaten something – don’t be late!’ Dawa spooned some butter into the wooden bucket, added the boiled water, then poured out their tea.
After Gongzha had drunk two bowls of butter tea and eaten a little bit of dried meat, he dug his wrinkled textbook out of a bamboo basket.
Dawa watched her son walking off into the distance, then gathered up the four younger children, closed the tent flap and went off to the sheep enclosure. It was the women’s job to deliver the lambs, and they remained at the lambing pasture. The men meanwhile concentrated on the other livestock, changing shifts every three days as they tended the separate herds of sheep, yaks and horses. The children who did not go to school stayed by their mothers’ sides, cuddling the lambs. Gongzha liked to watch the little lambs as they sucked eagerly on his outstretched fingers; it made him shout with laughter. Lambing season was an exciting time. As one new life after another appeared, the grassland that had lain dormant through the winter was suddenly revitalised.