Lessons from the Shaman Next Door

This summer, I witnessed the boy next door transmute himself into a shaman. And in that moment, the disparate parts of my diasporic world came together in the Khanghai Mountains of Mongolia.

I traveled to Mongolia to seek a family legend, my grandfather on my mother’s side, a man I never met and whom my mother barely knew. Born in Northern China in 1906, he grew up in Inner Mongolia until he was 18 when he traveled 1000 miles due south to enter Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzho, China. Around twenty years later, when my mother was 11, he died in the Battle of Siping, fighting the Communists in the Chinese Civil War.

Throughout my childhood, the memory of his presence hovered around the new life my parents were building in suburban America, teleported into our living room via a black and white photo displayed on the fireplace mantle. In this photo, he stands proudly to the left of Chiang Kai Shek, the leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang Party, who is seated. Both are dressed in military regalia. A classic portrait of a Kuomingtang general with his supreme leader, taken only a few months before the general, my grandfather, died. Ever since his ‘heroic’ death, my mother would be engulfed in a deep loss of the unknown that she could never quite shake. This not knowing what she lost or conversely what she might have had haunts her to this day.

After the fall of the Kuomintang in 1949, my mother emigrated from China to Taiwan along with 2 million other people escaping the Communists. As a teen in search of a future, she sustained herself on a diet of Doris Day and Gregory Peck movies, which she watched in the Taipei cinemas that she snuck into with her friends. She dreamt of white picket fences and the boy next door, anything that offered her a glimpse of a secure and stable life while providing an escape from her life as a post-war orphan. Only two years after losing her father, she had also lost her mother and was left to navigate the world on her own at the age of 13. Five years later, through her finely honed survival instincts, she acquired a scholarship to study in the US, her land of hope and dreams built up from Hollywood movies.

Above: White picket fences and the American Dream.

When my mother lost her parents, the next generation—my siblings and I—lost our grandparents. Even though I am of grandparenting age now, I still search the past for the grandparents I never knew. When Nancy Johnston, the founder of The House of Tengri, organised an educational trip to Mongolia and asked me to be the artist-in-residence, I agreed with excitement. I was hoping to connect to my grandfather on some level, desperate to mine any tenuous links to a family history of which I longed to know more.

My mother’s new life in America never lived up to her expectations, despite having four healthy children with my father, a successful business executive. We grew up with all the trappings of the American dream; a big house, private schools, the ‘best’ universities. It appeared that we wanted for nothing. And yet the one thing we wanted, we could not attain — happiness for my mother. Her inability to ever receive joy cast a long and dark shadow over our childhood years.

My mother’s narrative about her father is that he chose his men over his family. This is how he ended up traveling across China to fight in a battle that was doomed from the start. She often says, ‘He died a hero, but wouldn’t it have been more heroic for him to stay and protect his family?’ In those words, I feel her deep sense of abandonment. Angry for my mother and angry for us, I went to Mongolia to seek some sort of answer from my grandfather that might give my mother peace. A big ask, I know, but I am the daughter of a mother who built a whole new life on American movies.

The best travel experiences reveal themselves only when you free yourself from expectations. Born into a world of constant change and always at the mercy of nature, the nomadic herders in Mongolia adapt easily to new conditions. When plans change quickly and continually amidst ever-evolving circumstances, having certainty is a luxury. We never quite knew how things would turn out and soon accepted that very little would happen as planned in the next ten days of our trip. We quickly realised that we had no choice but to let go of any expectations we had of how things would unfold.

Appointments were cancelled and new ones appeared. On the first day of our trip from Ulaanbaatar to the Khangai Mountains, we stopped at the Hustai National Park to spend the night. After driving us this first leg, our driver was called back to Ulaanbaatar for a family emergency. He assured us that a new driver would be sent. A grumpy replacement arrived the following morning and we had no idea if he had been briefed.

Communication with the new driver was limited. It wasn’t the language barrier so much because we had a translator with whom he barely spoke. His recalcitrance meant we never knew when we would stop next; a little anxiety-inducing for those of us who are not built like camels but in retrospect, it didn’t matter. It was quite simple: we stopped when we stopped.

Bumping along the rocky terrain into the mountain steppes, we yearned for the roads we had been on before, unpaved and all. At least they had direction. With no road, we had no satellite navigation. How did the driver know where we were heading? Did he know where we were heading? And then suddenly out of nowhere, a man on a motorcycle appeared. A few hand gestures later, our driver started to follow him over the mountains to our camp. The guide led us to a cliff’s edge before stopping to show us the most fantastical view of the valley below, our camp for the next five days. It felt as if we were entering another world.

Above: Lapis Sky Camp by the side of the Tamil River in the Khangai Mountains.

Our base camp in the Khanghai Mountains of Central Mongolia was nestled at one end of a valley surrounded by expansive, green mountain ranges. The other end of the valley was the summer home of a herder family and their animals; yaks, horses, sheep and goats. The Tamir River on its journey from east to west flows through the valley connecting the two camps. Our gers were but mere white dots around which the animals grazed and rested.

Every morning as I sat sketching by the river, I watched a young man from the herder family gallop through the valley on his horse, surrounded by his animals as he drove them to their grazing plains. In the early evening, he would soar out of nowhere from the opposite direction, bringing his animals home for the night. Bent over his horse with the wind blowing through his hair, he was at one with himself, his horse, and his surroundings. His flow state was intoxicating. Could I ever experience the same, if only for a brief moment?

One morning, we headed toward the other end of the valley to visit the herder family. The young man was tending the horses outside in their homestead of gers. We were welcomed into the main ger by his mother and her 11-year-old grandson. They offered us the hard yak cheese they were preparing and drying to feed themselves through winter. We watched them churn fermented mare’s milk in a cow’s udder before pouring it out to serve us. The beds around the fire at the centre of the ger doubled as sofas and we chatted to them through our translator. We smiled a lot; we wanted them to like us. They smiled less but made us feel welcome and comfortable. We were uncomfortable intruding. They did not seem to mind.

Time and conversation in the ger passed; an hour, two hours? We went outside where the young man was waiting to lead us on our horses. He was bemused when we asked for helmets. Not that it mattered much, as we never even went into a trot, despite his encouragement and teasing. It struck me just how far we were from reaching flow. Is it even possible with a helmet on your head?

As the mother of two sons, I have often wondered how my grandfather navigated his journey on horse-back from Inner Mongolia through to the Southern tip of China; an ambitious solo journey for an 18-year-old.

The local families we met in the Khanghai Mountains, who welcomed us into their homes, offered intimate glimpses of their traditional nomadic lifestyles. Their deep connection to the land and their sustainable practices revealed that my grandfather’s accomplishment was not just about individual determination but rooted in a generational knowledge of living in harmony with the environment. In this context, I believe that his journey was fuelled by flow as opposed to fear. This comforts me.

A few days later, we were told that a Shaman was coming in the evening to perform a ceremony. “Shaman, how exciting!” we thought as we conjured all sorts of preconceived notions of mystical shamanistic practices. Like many things on our trip, our expectations were soon to be upturned.

When our young neighbour, the herdsman, appeared with a black robe, mask and ritual drum, we assumed he was merely delivering these ceremonial items while we waited for the Shaman's arrival. Instead, we watched in quiet surprise as he used these sacred items to transform himself. The same young man, the one who flies through the valley on the back of his horse and leads us on horses through the grasslands revealed his dual nature - the helpful boy next door was also a vessel of spirits.

In his ceremonial dress, he took his place as we gathered around him. His drumming and chanting filled the space, and when the drum fell silent, his voice changed - deep and rough, carrying echoes of the past. Through him spoke an ancestral spirit, the words flowing in an old ritual tongue that blended ancient Mongolian with the language of spirits.

After extending his welcome to all of us, he noted those who had journeyed from distant shores. He spoke of sensing Mongolian bloodlines running through some of us, ancient ties to this land. When he invited us to voice our questions, I found myself speaking before doubt could take root. The inherited ache and memories I had carried through years and across continents had found their moment - I told him of my journey to Mongolia, of my search for my grandfather, and asked if any messages awaited me from the other side.

He sighed heavily and responded sternly. “There are no messages from your grandfather. Coming to Mongolia was your choice. You must decide what you want to do next. There is no point in asking your grandfather. That was then. This is now.”

My expectations were shattered. I had come pursuing my grandfather who had left this world abruptly with many unanswered questions. Seeking some sort of peace and closure to offer my mother, I yearned for an opening into his world. Instead, I came up against an impenetrable wall with no door.

A few days later, on our drive back to Ulaanbaatar, I spotted my 18-year-old grandfather on the back of a motorcycle, laughing and hugging the waist of the driver, his friend of similar age. Their broad open faces were lit by the warmth of the sun. If he was on a horse, 100 years ago, he was on a motorcycle right now living in the moment. I had finally found my grandfather, the ‘hero’ who had left his wife and young family to lead his men into a battle he knew would take his life. That was his decision. He owed us no explanations but his setting an example of living in the present said it all.

Lessons from the Shaman Next Door

the american dream