By now, Kuang Chengming had already regained his composure. I stood up and explained, "Mr. Yin is already eighty-two years old, but he took his whole family and went through the Kunlun Mountains, crossed the Tanggula Mountains, all to realize his dream of completing a circuit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. He's been wanting to do this for decades."
"This in itself is a miracle, it's possible that he's the oldest senior official to travel the Qinghai-Tibet Railway." Kuang Chengming also stood up, saying, "let's go, I'll drive you back."
"It's more than a miracle." I gasped for breath as we walked downstairs, "my affinity, my knowledge and dreams of Tibet all began with a fortunate encounter with Mr. Yin. Fourteen years ago, when I had only just turned thirty, I first went with him along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. When I was in Golmud City the night before I climbed the mountain, do you know what I felt?"
"What did you feel?" Kuang Chengming was a tad astonished.
"Like I was entering an execution ground!"
"Please, you're exaggerating!" The puzzled Kuang Chengming, who had spent three years at Fenghuoshan Mountain said, "you're not just being creative?"
"No!" I shook my head, and said very sincerely, "I was very afraid of altitude sickness back then, and I was worried that I'd leave my bones on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. When we reached Shigatse, I was quite unwell and I didn't eat or drink anything for three days and nights, dreaming of a heavenly fantasy, and I nearly died."
"Really?"
"Without a doubt!" I nodded in reply.
The Nissan jeep drove out of the city gates, and the poplars pierced the night sky like sharp swords, the silhouettes of trees inlayed in long, thin scars on the sky, and above the treetops, hung the Kunlun moon, its light like an explosion, making the wide Kunlun road drip into the pure waves of the Milky Way, neon shone on both sides of the great thoroughfare, the rough projections of distant snowy peaks were like a palace in the heavens. I sat in the jeep's passenger seat, and like a nimble speedboat passing through a space-time tunnel. The Kunlun moon lit the skies with its eternal presence, the legends of this heavenly road by no means came from snowy dust and smoke, but were gradually illuminated by the lunar halo.
I felt grateful, for when filled with mysterious longing for the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at a young age, I was fortunate enough to be in the staff subordinate to Yin Fatang, whose experiences of the mysteries of Tibet had an imperceptible influence on me. My perceptual field, my life, creativity and even my emotional world were deeply imprinted with the traces of Tibet.
This fortunate encounter had begun in the 1980s.
On the eve of Chinese New Year in 1985, Yin Fatang, came to Beijing from Lhasa, becoming the deputy political commissar of the Second Artillery Corps.
Fortunately, in that year I was only twenty-six, and served as the secretary of the Party committee of the Second Artillery Corps, so I gradually became closer to Yin Fatang. Tibet blew toward me like a hazy blizzard.
The general had not yet reported for duty, but one letter after another had arrived from Tibet. Like layers of gentle wings, they had fallen on my desk, and we picked it up to look at, and couldn't help but laugh involuntarily: it was addressed to Great Master Yin Fatang. The Provincial Cregional Party Committee First Secretary of the, surprisingly, had the elegant Buddhist name of Fatang ( "Dharma Void" ). Why would a Buddhist master enlist in the army? How could a Buddhist master climb the ranks to become provincial (regional) first secretary? Was he a revolutionary "Tsanpo" , or a Buddhist in-between? The name "Yin Fatang" was sufficient in itself to draw strong curiosity. I raised my head and looked around expecting to glimpse the graceful bearing of a monk. I was to finally have my opportunity, when one evening, in the winter of that year, I accompanied the office director in sending a letter to his temporary residence at the Huangsi Complex of the General Political Department.
The doorbell rang, and after its ear-piercing sounds stopped, the sound of a door creaking open could be heard. A government official welcomed us into a drawing room. In the blink of an eye, an ordinary looking, slim elderly man appeared: he was not tall, his pace nimble, and his forehead deeply imprinted with the growth rings of years of enormous change, his hair the standard military inch-long cut, and it was nearly impossible to see the wide forehead, long face and big ears of the content countenances of officialdom. When he called us in to sit, he was benevolent and good-natured, and it was hard to connect him with the notion of an all-powerful, god-like official in charge of the Tibetan border region.
On July 19, 1990, after a five-year hiatus, Yin Fatang as a member of the National People's Congress entered Tibet, became the last political commissar of the PLA railway force, traveling with the deputy commander of the Second Artillery Corps, Zheng Ti. I again resumed my old trade, temporarily serving as Yin Fatang's secretary, and thus opening the prelude to the sixth journey onto the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.