"": 200,
"": "",
"": "Snow, great swaths of snow filled the sky.
It was only October, yet thick white snow had already sealed off the mountains.
The grass was buried, and wild yaks huddled in low-lying ground to shelter from the blizzard.
Domesticated yaks had sheds built for them.
The towns of the Tibetan Lands all stood on flat grasslands, with streams winding around them. At most, there were a few small hills, and even those were rare.
Outside Dabaozi, cattle sheds and sheep pens stood beside several connected single-story houses. Their sturdy roofs kept out most of the wind and snow.
Inside one of the houses, an iron stove blazed in the center of the room, bright sparks visible through its gaps.
A dark-skinned Tibetan man in his forties was drinking milk tea, kneading a lump of tsampa in his hand.
An iron tray sat on the stove. Sheep blood sausage, beef liver, and pieces of beef sizzled on it, filling the air with the aroma of fat.
A woman sat beside the stove, turning the food with chopsticks so it would cook evenly.
Every so often, she cast a cold glance at the door.
The thick door was wrapped in hides, keeping the wind from slipping through even the cracks.
Ice crusted the glass, blurring everything outside.
Only a small palm print remained strikingly clear.
The man spoke a few twisting, obscure words.
He meant, "That little bastard must have frozen stiff by now, right?"
The woman answered in equally obscure Tibetan that outsiders would not understand.
This home was not theirs. It belonged to the husband of the woman's younger sister.
A few years earlier, while her brother-in-law was herding livestock, he had ventured deep into the grasslands to drive a wild yak home. He had