"North of the West"

The Duku Highway is only open five months a year. For the remaining seven months it was closed and covered with snow, waiting to open again next summer. But the road is not in a hurry, it knows someone will come. The road waits for those who are willing to wait. Writer Lin Yan was stuck in front of the blank document of his third book for three whole years, until his best friend Chen Yu handed him a yellowed envelope before he died of illness. Written on it is a Kazakh place name that cannot be found on the map - "Sūw qūndaq", which means "where the snow falls". Lin Yan did not ask what was written in the letter. He only knew that this was the only letter that Chen Yu had not sent in his life. Lin Yan arrived in Xinjiang on the eve of the closure of the Dongdaku Highway. There was only one guide left at the inn who was willing to take over the job—Karya, who had been running on this road for eighteen years. He was silent for a long time when he saw the handwriting on the envelope, because that line was written by his brother Ayken, who had been missing for eighteen years. Two people, two letters, the same address, a past that had been buried for twenty years slowly unfolded in the September snowstorm. Traveling north along the Duku Highway through the Tianshan Mountains, they found each other holding the same letter in their yurts on the Nalati Grassland. By the Swan Lake in Bayinbulak, the pasts of two families were pieced together: Karya's brother Ayken and Chen Yu's sister Chen Xi, a pair of cross-ethnic lovers, eloped to "where the snow falls" twenty years ago, and were both buried under the poplar tree at the northern foot of Muztage. When they finally arrived at the destination and took out the two farewell letters that had been written but never sent from the rusty iron box, Karya reconciled with herself after eighteen years of waiting, while Lin Yan discovered that on the way of delivering letters for others, his lost sentences were coming back one by one. The next summer, Lin Yan returned to Duku Highway. In the third year, three young leaves emerged from the long-dead Populus euphratica tree - it waited long enough to confirm that someone would come before willing to come back to life. Glacial meltwater flows north every year, and Populus euphratica grows toward the south. The road reopens every summer, but what's really important never disappears as the seasons turn. This is a journey about waiting and arrival, farewell and reunion - some people have been searching on the road for eighteen years, and some have been sitting in front of a blank document for three years. Finally, they stopped by the same melting glacier and found that they were waiting for the same answer. Purpose: People need to re-identify themselves on the road. Farewell is not the end, it is the end of endless words. Waiting is not a waste of time, it gives enough time for those who should come.