"The Ballad of the Border Wall" is a family epic that spans more than two hundred years and traverses northern China. It uses "wind" as a narrative clue to connect the blood blending and cultural migration of the Mongolian and Han peoples.
The story begins in 1775 on the Zalut grassland. At the age of fourteen, Qiqige married Horqin and brought with him the Nang pit of the Zarut people and the Wenggun (ancestral idol) worshiped for generations, which became the marriage link between the two tribes. Her daughter Naren is a fusion of the blood of the two ethnic groups. She met Zhao Yongfa, a Han merchant from Yizhou, at the trading port of Willow Edge. They got married at the foot of the border wall and gave birth to her daughter Yuelian. After Zhao Yongfa's early death, Na Ren returned to the grassland. Yue Lian was taken into the Zhao family in Yizhou by her uncle. She grew up as a Han lady, but she always hid a Mongolian robe and Weng Gun left behind by her mother. After growing up, Yue Lian married Wang Ruitang, a Shanxi merchant, and brought the salty milk tea and Zalut patterned scones from the grassland to Qixian County, Shanxi Province. The latter evolved into the "pot helmet" passed down from generation to generation in the Wang family. During the war in Tongzhi, Yuelian moved with her husband along the Yellow River to Pingluo, Ningxia, and planted Elaeagnus jujube trees brought from Yizhou, completely taking root in the Han region.
A hundred years later, in 2025, the genetic test of Wang Xiulan, a descendant of the Pingluo Wang family, revealed a forgotten bloodline: she has more than five generations of cousins in Zharut Banner, Kezuohou Banner, Inner Mongolia, and Yixian County, Liaoning. The fragments of common ancestry clearly point to the morning when Qiqige got married in Zalut two hundred years ago. The novel ends with the cyclical image of wind - from Zalut to Horqin, passing the wicker edge, crossing the Yellow River, and finally being re-identified under an Elaeagnus tree in the Ningxia Plain.
The work embodies the evolution and persistence of culture during migration through material carriers such as Nangkeng, Wenggun, Elaeagnus angustifolia, and Guokui. When the pattern of zarut is printed on the Han pot helmets, when the salty smell of milk tea penetrates into the kitchens of Shanxi merchants, and when Mongolian ancestry is rediscovered by modern science, the novel reveals a core proposition: blood never disappears, it just hides in the loess in a more complex form, waiting to be reawakened by a drop of blood and a gust of wind. It's a parable about the disappearance of borders and a meditation on how cultures take root.
Intention: Don't forget the roots in your blood