The Tibetan old man was very enthusiastic, and when he saw that I couldn't tell the difference, he shouted at the boiler room: "Chen Xuehan!"

The sound was so loud that it seemed as if the snow on the roof of the post office had been shaken down a few inches, and the man named Chen Xuehan, hearing the shouts of the old Tibetan people, raised his head in the crowd and looked at us with some confusion. I walked over and found that he was of Han nationality, with a particularly dark face and rough skin, and he looked younger than he looked from afar.

I said in Chinese, "Hello, did you paint that oil painting at the post office?"

Chen Xuehan glanced at me, then nodded. I noticed that there was nothing bright in his eyes, which were peculiar to people who lived a very peaceful life. Because he was so calm, he didn't need to think about a lot of questions often, and he entered a particularly step-by-step state.

I handed him a cigarette and asked him for details of the painting. Chen Xuehan was a little surprised, looked at me, closed the sluice gate of the boiling water boiler, and asked me, "Why are you asking this? Do you know him?"

His voice was unusually hoarse, but his words were very clear. I told me about the general situation, and also talked about the general background of this person and my relationship with him.

Chen Xuehan showed a slightly surprised expression, took off the gloves made of white towels, and walked out of the boiler room, "You recognize the wrong person, this oil painting was painted twenty years ago, how old were you at that time?"

I was a little surprised that I didn't expect the painting to be so old, even though it did not look new. I didn't know how to answer his question, because it wasn't really a sentence or two, but he didn't seem to really want to know anything, and continued: "This man has nothing to do with me, and I've only seen him once, right here, in Metuo. ”

He pointed in a direction outside the door, where it was snow-white, and it was a snow-capped mountain in the distance, "I met him there, if you want to know more, you can ask the lama there." ”

I looked in the direction he was pointing, and saw a building hidden in the silver and white in the snow.

"What is that place?" I asked.

"That's a lama temple. Chen Xuehan said, "Twenty years ago, the people in my paintings appeared at the door of that lama temple. ”

"Was there anything strange going on at that time, or was there anything special about that lama temple?" I asked, and there was always something strange going on where he appeared. Or, the lama temple itself should have a lot of extraordinary.

Chen Xuehan shook his head and thought for a while before saying, "There is nothing strange about it, the only strange thing is that this person could not have appeared in that place in that season at that time." ”

"Why?"

"I can't tell, but you can ask the great lama in the temple now, he was there. ”

Chen Xuehan told me that the oil painting was painted three days before this person left Motuo, and the original painting was made by the great lama at that time, and he copied this painting, and he tried to copy this painting with the leftover paint used by the great lama, and the original painting was in the room of the great lama.

Many Western/Tibetan lamas have very high aesthetic literacy and professional knowledge, and many great lamas have multiple degrees from famous foreign universities, which I attribute to the concentration behind the life of pure heart and asceticism.

Thinking about this layer, thinking about what might have happened to him on the snowy mountain at that time, I was a little distracted.

"Are you going? Three hundred dollars, I'll take you. He said, "That lama temple, not the locals, can't go in." ”

Under the leadership of Chen Xuehan, we climbed up in the broken snow, and on the snow-covered steps, only a very small road for one person to go up and down was swept away, and the steps were very steep, almost straight up and down. I brought two men with me, and they insisted on coming up with me, and now they are both regretting it to death.

Along the way, Chen Xuehan told me some stories about this lama temple, and also talked about his life by the way, because his narrative was completely ignored by me at first, but in fact, some of the inconspicuous things mentioned in it played a great role in the subsequent development, so I hope to record them all, so that I can see the ins and outs of the whole thing.

Chen Xuehan's life experience is more special, he lived in Xi/Tibet for many years, the first three years as a soldier, after demobilization, he returned to Shanghai one year, worked as a security guard in a company, worked for three months, felt very uncomfortable with life in the city, and returned to Xi/Tibet, and stayed in Motuo for a year with nothing to do, earning some money by helping people lead the way or being a guide, living a very poor but comfortable life.

In that year, he met a lot of snow mountain guides, and then they introduced him into the line, and he was doing this for several years, there are very few Han guides with his background, not professional, generally only do mountaineering assistance, professional guides are responsible for opening the road before and after, he is responsible for observing in the middle of the mountaineering team, the main work is nothing more than to help some people with weak physique carry things or deal with frostbite, etc., although it is hard, but the income is very good.

After being a soldier for three years, the foundation is there, and I don't feel tired when I am familiar with it. Chen Xuehan spent about four months of the year as a tour guide in Motuo and two months in Nianqing Tanggula Mountain, and the rest of the year because of the high mobility of tourists, so there was no fixed sphere of influence. Mountaineering has a management association, receiving the application will assign tasks down, at that time, many times the guide to help with these procedures, most of the work is relatively easy, the general tourist will not climb too high too hard, now people can also see, know a lot of things do not need to be persistent.

West / Tibet is a mysterious and sacred place, in recent years of tourism development, as well as Chen Xuehan's experience of living in West / Tibet, once made him feel that the fog on the West / Tibet surface has become thinner, but the events of that year told him that in fact, this is not the case, West / Tibet has always faced us is only a face it has to show after social changes, behind it, the vast and boundless snow mountains in the depths, the ancient and mysterious under the glacier snow layer is far from being known.

In April of that year, he received a group of six individual tourists from Germany in Metuo. Four men and four women. The route is from Motuo to Nianqing Tanggula Mountain. He followed the team throughout the whole process, and there was also a Tibetan tour guide named Aga, who took over the work. This time, all of them have experience in mountaineering. Three of them are said to have been to Meri a year ago. So there were plans to reach the top at that time.

Of course, there are many categories of summit climbing. If it was to climb the Nian Qing Tanggula Mountain, he would not have the slightest confidence to go up. In addition, such amateur mountaineering tourists were not allowed to go up physically, and their plan at that time was to climb some peaks at an altitude of about 4,500 meters, and the route was set at that time. He has seen a lot of this kind of foreigner, and he usually comes here for two purposes, one is to feel Shambhala, and the other is to feel like climbing the snowy mountain. So at that time, I felt that this job was relatively easy.

It was a big job, and it paid a lot, and he and Aga were very happy and had prepared for it. After contacting the porter and the mountaineering cooperation, I went to Lhasa about four days in advance to wait for them.