If There Is a Next Life, I Want to Be a Tree

Lin Shen, 32, is an investment banking manager and a decisive “career elite.” To secure a tourism project worth hundreds of millions, she leads a team deep into the mountains of Guizhou, targeting China’s last gunner tribe, the Basha Miao Village. In the village stands a thousand-year-old banyan tree, known to the Miao people as the “Heart of the Mountain God.” Born from a tree, buried with a tree: this is the Basha people’s simplest philosophy of life. When a child is born, the parents plant a tree for them. When someone dies, that tree is cut down and used to wrap the body for burial, then a new tree is planted above it. There are no burial mounds or gravestones, only an evergreen tree, a symbol that life carries on. Lin Shen doesn’t believe in any of this. She believes only in data, logic, and commercial returns. Until she reaches out to touch the ancient tree while collecting samples… Countless memories surge into her mind like a tide: war, migration, ancient prayers, and the image of a woman who looks exactly like her, giving her life to protect these mountains and forests. The ancient tree has “chosen” her. The village elder kneels before her. “Protector, you have finally returned.” The irony is even greater when her phone rings at the same time. Headquarters has emailed to say the Basha development project has been approved, and she is its project lead. The woman just chosen by the gods as a protector is also the project’s biggest driving force.