Dream of the Camel Bell 2

He was once an innocent young man from beyond Jiayu Pass, following the sound of camel bells into an endless sea of yellow sand.

That year, the banners atop Kuren changed hands again and again. Saren, daughter of a Mongol prince, clutched his sleeve amid the flames. “Take me with you.” From then on, a pair of fugitives roamed the Gobi, with Russian cavalry behind them and boundless sandstorms ahead.

Before his father died, he pressed a map shaped like a begonia leaf into his arms. “Remember, this is our home.”

But that leaf slowly withered as the years passed.

Forty years later, he had become a white-haired old man atop Jiayu Pass. Whenever the wind rose, he could hear the camel bells. People said a trading caravan was returning, but only he knew they belonged to souls forever trapped in a foreign land, searching for the way home.

Then one day, a young man who had traveled from across the strait knelt before a grave and called out, “Grandpa.”

At last, the sandstorm died down. Amid the camel bells, two generations crossed mountains and seas, piecing together the complete map of their homeland.

A song of “Dream of the Camel Bells,” and a century of tears for home and country. This is an epic about one man, one family, and one generation, measuring the land with their footsteps and guarding with their lives the question: “Where is home?”