the Green Pastures in Yang Dao

While reading Yang Dao (which means The Sheep’s Way in English) written by Li Juan, I feel myself like a straying horse meeting a lush green pasture.

Because of the pure and clear words, I “know” the little woman Li Juan online and am familiar with her Yang Dao as well as her “Altay”.

Yang Dao narrates Li Juan’s experience of migration following with a Kazakh family. We seem to be also migrating with her by reading the words. When spring came, they set out on their journey during which they experienced cold wind and rain, walked through the hard mountain road and wade the fast-flowing river. All these experience as well as what they saw and heard seem to be trivial details. However, the words do not like to come from a woman but rather like a calm old man who is sitting under a warm light and telling a very ordinary story in a humorous way, which makes people feel so warm and quiet as if sitting and squinting in the autumn sun along with the gurgling of the brook.

Li Juan’s words are simple and bright, warm and moving. They like corns or wheat grown naturally in crop ground, which makes people who desire to harvest be full of joy. When you read you will discover that in these seemingly casual words, there exists hidden amusing and humorous words that can strike our hearts. They are invigorating like deep night stars or morning dew. I even think there is a pair of moving small dimples on the face of these words and you will be excited as long as you look at her.

“The shepherd, who went to look for the sheep, encountered a ferocious sand storm in the halfway. He rode in the dust and fumbled step by step until the horse was no longer willing to move forward. The wind was roaring from the sky to the ground and the world was almost crumbling. Then he dismounted and held the reins to move hard against the freezing wind along the foot of the hill. Later, he really could not walk any longer so that he turned away to lean against a bank of rock to brace himself with difficulty. Just then, he dropped his head and saw four bright and gentle eyes in the deep crevice at his feet.”

“At night he huddled with the kids together, curled tightly, sinking into a peaceful sleep to grow deeply and thickly. Not far under the stars, the mothers were kneeling and lying by heading the east to wait for dawn.”

“Casey’s family raised a flock of fancy sheep which quite resembled a group of pandas seen from far when they drove them.”

“The water was boiling, and the vapor rushed to open the lid and cracked abruptly. I took the teapot and saw the dazzling flames like the gaudiest flowers blooming lonely and warmly in the dark.”....

In fact, the sentences are mundane with nothing special; however, as long as you read carefully, you will feel yourself also being crowded with those lovely sheep in the dark. What a warm scene! Then a loaf of delicious naan is in your hand. Chewing them slowly, you will be immersed in happiness.

Li Juan wrote these words as she walked on Yang Dao while actually we are walking in her words. The words have both the smell of horse manure and the flavor of naan roasted by the manure. Life is ordinary and trivial even with frustration and hardship. However, because of human’s efforts and generosity, all these experiences become happiness.

Someone who has commented on Li Juan’s My Altay said, she had never wasted a drop of life. Moreover, she packaged what she had seen and felt into her own memory and then wrote them down on paper slowly in her corner. While the same in Yang Dao, she neither wasted anything she had experienced. They all liked the naan roasted by the Casey girl, which was knocked on pot eaves three times at last with a sound of “Bang, Bang, Bang”, then the burnt black particles embedded in the naan would all fell down and the naan would be perfect as a full moon.

But Yang Dao cannot be described merely by words like perfect. My friend sad, Li Juan’s words had the same degree of original ecology with the scenery of Jiuzhai Lakes (Jiuzhaigou Valley). Indeed, reading her words makes my breath rather free and comfortable, which is similar with the feeling of walking under the blue sky and white clouds of Jiuzhai Lakes (Jiuzhaigou Valley). The sky is so azure and my heart is so broad.

Yang Dao · Pastures in Spring

Chapter 1

Standing on top of the highest mountain in Jill Arter, we couldn’t see a tree, neither a person. Bare gravel hillside was continuous ups and downs with much snow in the shade. Distant and lonely flock slowly spread in the hillside, while the sloping sky was smooth and clear. It was indeed desolate in Jill Arter, but as the spring pasture, its warmth and broadness deeply comforts the hearts and eyes of the shepherds who trekked from the remote and cold southern wilderness.

It didn’t come to May, but Kathy Palmer has put on the short sleeve T-shirt, and revealed her healthy and bright arms in the cool air. We carried big woven bags to pick up the cow muck in the south of the valley. We walked carefully around the swamp, and moved forward along the steep cliff.

Sunshine covered the world unimpeded, and the chill from Gobi Desert, gloomily and heavily declined under the propulsion of the sunshine like the water line. It has been stopped down to the ankle, such as hard solid condensation in that position, with the sun and powerful confrontation. Then chill would completely flat, melting, deeply into the earth, until the grand advent of June.

In any case, it was already spring. In the Gobi desert, the fine green leaves came out of the white precarious bundle of grass, with finely sage green dot blade in twos and threes off the earth. Especially in the water and marsh area, it seems spray into the vast stretches of green obviously in the distance. However, when we came close to it, those green was just the water moss and weak weeds.

The shallow stream flowing through the slopes where we stayed in nearby was oozed from the swamp of this valley. Because all the nearby livestock drank water from the swamp, there were large chunks of horses’ manure clusters along the trail of the valley and precarious long grass. We walked all the way, when we found the one that looks dry, we first kicked it and felt its weight on the toe and looked at its speed and form while it tumbled down, then we can immediately accurately tell whether it was really as dry as a bone. Certainly, we took away the dry one. If not, that kick just made it turn over and its surface under the extreme exposure in the sun, and speed up the final moisture evaporation rate. When we passed by on the way back or the next day, again a kick can pick it up conveniently into the bag.

Sometimes we kicked over a piece of cow dung, a nest of dung beetles suddenly exposed to the sun, which seems to have a banquet on the roof. Dung beetle’s name isn’t pleasant to hear, but in fact, it is actually quite lovely insects. It has bright and clean emission crustaceans, slender neat limb claw, and the round body, clumsy and hardworking. In contrast, scorpions with fearful claws and strange color made people fear and unhappy.

Whenever Kathy kicked over a big dry cow dung to see that scene, she always yelled suddenly and showed it to me, and then spat at it.

The more we walked, the farther from each other. On the shoulder, the bag was also more and more heavy. I went to a large stone and put down the bag to rest for a while. I looked around and saw Kathy who was in the other side of the swamp. She was lying to rest in the sun. Her red T-shirt was dazzling in the wilderness, like the light bulb at night. Not far away from her, the boy Hu Anxi held a long stick to poke into the swamp water, two thin plaits fluttering in the wind from the back of his head.

Half an hour later, we embarked on the way home, carrying our bulging bag. Hu Anxi also carried a smaller one. Labor made this boy of six years old looked like a real man as calm and sensible. He followed us silently, when he felt tired, he quietly rested by leaning against the stone on the side of the road.

Near home, when we stood still to turn round at the waist of the hill, Hu Anxi still slowly walked in the wilderness far below and lonely, step by step, carrying bag with deeply hunch .

The top of the hill on the doorway, dear Zachby’s mother clawed fire pit burned in early morning, which is the ash of burning dump. She grated a dry horse manure sprinkled on top, bending over and blew a few breaths. Soon, seemingly the ash burned down smoothly rose from the dung slag. She was covering several chunks of cow dung, while strong wind was blowing along the hillside, increasingly thick smoke and chaos. She blew a few breaths again, with transparent flame crashing, which was like a man suddenly opened his eyes after a long sleep,

I hurriedly put down the bag on the shoulders, and dumped all the cow dung in the fire pit. Mother chose a few bigger pieces to surround the flame. Bundles of sharp flame from the gap of dry dung coming out, and mother put up a tripod above the fiery pit, adjusted the height, to hang the aluminum kettles with crooked mouth.

Chapter 2

On that day, Cocoa went away, but Sima Huli came here then.

There are two motorcycles and a horse with white hooves parked outside the yurt. Besides him, ShaLeHan, the second daughter of Zackby’s mother, came with her husband. The person riding a horse was the classmate of Kathy.

Before into the yurt, I and Kathy washed our hands. We put our dirty and ragged coats into flowers band gap outside the yurt .We took a comb to make up our hair from the same place, still we removed the hairpin to redo and also made sure that our faces were clean.

Clearly, only the four guests, but we found the room full to the brim. Everyone drank tea around the low table, with lots of food on it. Cocoa crouched in the corner of the stack bedding looking at the photo album. With two kids running around, one of them was not agile squarely against that table, weeping loudly.

Our only neighbor in Jill Arter, Alemahan came over to help. She was inclined cuddle vigorously kneading in a huge tin basin, saying to do "full" to entertain guests. "Full" is actually the same food as the steamed stuff.

Yesterday, mother and Alemahan went to drink tea in my grandparents' home in north of the river Elgi. And they brought back several pieces leftover of sheep tail fat from a feast, which are cooked greasy white. There were also several large pieces of solidified grease, floating on the broth. When I knew Alemahan would make all these good things chopped as baking stuffing, I scared silent and decided to pretend to have a stomachache at the dinner.

However, when steamed stuffed bun coming out of the pot, I didn’t care so much. I tried hard to endure under the condition of the suppression or unconsciousness, but ate three... When I was eating and tried to remind myself that I was chewing white greasy filled with mutton fat, which was in vain.

It’s almost impossible to refuse food in the wild where anything eatable is always frantically attractive in every case, such as the roots of tulip tasted slightly sweet, but the mouth could be full of the flavor, forever.

After the meal, the tiredness came out but always couldn’t resist by us. Everyone seldom talked, just sitting or lying on the tapestry.

Kathy's classmate, the neighbor, was from five kilometers in the east. He came to get his own lost lamb. This guy sitting on the seats, silently ate lots of food, only left three roots of green onion that Cocoa picked from the cliff when he grazed sheep.

Yesterday evening, when we drove sheep back to the ring, Cocoa found a lamb, and bolt it on the door, waiting for people to come to claim it. The next day he went out for the sheep to seek the owner. So the keeper came to get the sheep back.

The angry brown lamb bolted on the yurt door. Once he saw someone close to him, He immediately went back three steps, two front feet, in a defensive way, and was against the ground to and kept a close eye forward to a part of the other below the knee. I went over and dragged his thin small hoof and touched his soft forehead and pink lips. He struggled hard, but failed.

I hold the lamb looking into the distant line and saw a group of geese flying through the sky slowly and mightily. After it, the sky became blank, and I was very thirsty and hungry.

Soon after that, the two melodious and calm hovering cranes went into this blank. Later, there came out another three. A total of five didn’t fly away and stayed there for a long time.

I already knew that Cocoa was to leave because his wife was going to labor in two months. In the early winter of last year, when the south flock passed the south bank of the spring and autumn settlements in Ulungur, the couple stopped there. No further wild winter pasture. This spring the flock went north, Cocoa temporarily left his wife to help the family taking sheep to the spring pasture at the northern bank in Irtysh River. The shepherd, instead of Cocoa, was MaHuLi, Cocoa’s younger brother and also the fourth kid of Zackby’s mother, and he was just 20. This summer, as the only male in the family, he will become the pillar of us. When this kid came home, the guests chatted with him for a while, and he quickly took off the new shoes and replaced them with an old pair, and then he sat to polish the shoes carefully in front of the door, and he looked quite busy.

I like Cocoa. He was shy and beautiful, and also dark, thin and tall. I could remember the first time we met when I lost in the wild and left alone for quite a long time. When I climbed to the highest top of the hill and saw Cocoa riding a horse on the opposite direction in distant place, I was ecstasy, desperately waving, crying out, and very excited. But I feared in the wild. ... In fact, he is a kind-hearted man who won’t hurt others forever. The wilderness itself is filled with a sense of security, and survival shepherd here has bright eyes and a calm heart.

Later, I learned that it was not our first meeting. For many years in winter, he always went to my grocery to buy things in Akehala. He could remember me, but I always befuddled. And it was at that meeting recently, I visited his father, Shah, and him at the bank settlements of the south bank in Ulungur. We sat face to face with tea and talked for a long time.

——But at that time, I rushed to the ridge, and I shouted straight toward him, “Hello, Excuse me. Is this way to Cocoa’s home? Fellow! Do you know Cocoa?" ....