Words Beyond Words

I was enchanted upon reaching the innermost Jiuzhaigou Valley. Crisscrossed trees slept in this pellucid lake for thousands of years without decay, allowing lichens on the trunks to send their viridity through the placid surface to embrace the invisible green from surrounding mountains.

Boardwalks led the outbound journey to bubbling pools and pearly shoals. To be energy-wise, I took the shuttle bus, waving farewells to the autumn valley: snow-capped Tibetan Plateau, crystal cascades singing through a profusion of mountain vegetation, and the yellowing wheatgrass flirting with late blooming flowers.

As I planned, I popped down and was pleased by such reserved nature in this Tibetan enclave. But what next? Half a day counting on serendipity?

Off the beaten track I wandered into a quiet lane. In a kirana attended by a middle-aged woman in Tibetan robe, a hairpin stone caught my eye: bluish green specked with copper. ‘Turquoise, we Tibetans love it!’ Me too. As her sole customer, I appreciated her collections and learnt their Tibetan interpretations. Saying it was Mid-Autumn Day, she offered me a cup of homemade butter tea, resembling what I tried in Lhasa, but cosier. Why didn’t I book a homestay? Spontaneously she called her sister and I hit the road, forgetting to ask what the language was on the phone.

After 3 hours, I was 55 miles away in Songpan, dining in a spacious double-storey Tibetan house, half-wooden, half-modern, with a pillared foreyard and a garden of vegetables. Relying on limited vocabularies and referential gestures, we exchanged ideas over dishes and mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Day. Differences eased by the highland barley liquor, distance shortened with smiles, we made noises reaching each other.

When my hostess invited me for a mountain walk, I pointed at the holy mountain, on whose bare rock giant Sanskrit characters were carved, visible from a great distance – ‘that one’? ‘Om mani padme hum,’ she replied and held in her hand a prayer wheel with beautiful engravings, ?? ???????? ???, same as those on the rock!

Off we went into the dusk for a hill only nearby. Along our ascent, ‘om mani padme hum’, she murmured so and spun the wheel one round after another. On the mountaintop, prayer flags in Buddhist colours decorated a shrine and blessed it by fluttering loudly in the wind; laid before us was the crowded village lit up against the full moon. ‘Om mani padme hum,’ I picked up a foreign line. We both laughed, beyond words.