Driving along the winding road, I felt the altitude increasing as we inched toward the village.   

Once in a while, road signs appeared. Old Tibetan script unraveled across the arrowed signs, some fading. Mandarin characters in brighter white paint took smaller sizes and crowded below them, obviously an unexpected addition during the creation of these signs. On the roadsides, a riverbed of brown rocks glimmered through the surface of a transparent stream, worming down the slope. When the current met the water that bounced off the rocks, they generated white spindrifts that disappeared immediately. Then, the murals came to view – paintings depicting the vast grassland where sheep grazed, and beyond, bare mountains devoid of trees turned gray under the sunlight.  

We arrived at a wooden observation deck where several tourists snapped pictures. A few black eagles circled the sky. Their movement seemed stationary, opening their wings wide and flapping them once in a while. On one side of the deck, a Tibetan woman carried a handful of colorful bands and several headbands made of white cosmos flowers. She had a plastic chair in front of her, helping her customer weave Tibetan braids.   

When we reached the hotel, the sky turned dark completely. A man stood at the front desk. He was about 25. He wore a blue jacket and faded jeans, and a pair of silver glasses rested against the protrusion of his nose.  

“How can I help you?” He spoke Mandarin with a foreign accent.  

In the previous days, I learned that only some people in this region could use Mandarin fluently. They have their local language, the Tibetan script, whose letters appear on the signboards of the shops, along with the Mandarin characters. Occasionally, the absence of the widely used language could be found in restaurants full of local customers.   

We checked in and he guided us to our rooms. It was a long walk so I conversed with him. He was proficient in Chinese because he had taught Mandarin courses in the local school. Since the school was on summer break, he worked at the front desk for two months. He discussed the learning of Mandarin among the new generation of Tibetan children. Although it brings them the ability to communicate with more people from other areas, he argued the cultural importance of preserving their own language.   

The next morning, we set off early and drove down the mountains. The large prairie appeared in front of us and extended to the end of sight. We rented a brown horse from a group of herders, and they guided us toward the valley and back. After returning the horse, we took a bag of apples and pears from our car and gave them to the group to express our gratitude.   

“For us?” The herders seemed quite delighted.  

Through the conversation, we realized that fruits were scarce in the prairie. They insisted on offering us a meal in return. We all excitedly agreed, because none of us had eaten their local dishes before.

A young girl led us to their tent. Her face was flushed because of the strong sunlight in the highlands. She pulled a smartphone out from her pocket and typed something in while walking. Using a smartphone was not common among the herders. She was a 7th-grader and learned the technology from school.   

The polygon tent was their semi-permanent house. They would usually pasture the sheep herds during the summer when grass flourished in the valleys. After the end of the season, they would move back to their houses in town. The top of the tent was covered with black materials made of sheep wool. On each corner of the polygon, a string extended downward and was hooked by a sharp metal spike into the ground. Several blankets were placed inside the tent around a boiler in the middle of the room. Since trees didn’t grow in the area, they collected dry cow excrement and used it as burning fuel for the boiler. She handed us a wooden box with two blocks in it, containing the gray powder of highland barley flour and white granules of casein. We cut a small piece of melted, yellow butter, mixed it with some powder and casein, and poured hot milk in from the pot on the boiler. After stirring, the mixture became a viscous, light gray liquid. It did not have any strong taste, but contained energy and protein. I felt full after drinking a small cup.   

We had our lunch while the young girl shared her regular summer schedule with us. In the morning, she would take the sheep herds out to the grassland. They would feed on the prairie for the whole day, and she would guide them back to the sheep pen around sunset. As a 7th-grader in school, she spoke Mandarin with great proficiency.   

“Do you use Chinese when talking with friends and teachers in school?”  

“Of course. All the people there use it.” She smiled proudly. “I can also understand and talk a bit of Tibetan script. It’s for the elders in the family – they only know that language. But I can hardly recognize a few words of it on the paper. My parents know the language better.”   

After finishing our meals, we thanked the group of herders. They guided us back to our car and waved to say goodbye.  

We stayed for a few more days, after which we drove out of the village. In the car, I gazed at the Tibetan letters on the road signs, appearing once in a while but quickly falling backwards.