In past years Hsi has achieved widespread acclaim for her collections of poetry and prose works, Pungent Life, Regretless Youth, and Traces of Maturity. One poem, "Leaving Home," has been made into a song that popular singer Tsai Chin included in her repertoire for a while.

In that age of folk songs, Hsi Mu-jung was a symbol of romanticism and sentimentality.

In the years since, Hsi has replaced her poet's garb with the glasses of a historian and the robes of an anthropologist. With an earnest heart and a lucid style, she describes the historical realities, myths, folk songs, and local flavor of the Mongolian steppes. While engrossed in the text, the reader is invariably whisked away to the grassland world that Hsi has recreated.

The beauty of Mongolia

The book is divided into four major sections. The first section, "The Feast," comprises 48 pieces about the historic vicissitudes of steppe culture, and was originally written in response to the China Times' invitation for manuscripts to post in one of its columns. Here the focus is on the nomadic Xiongnu tribe. Hsi brings the reader visions of flourishing plains replete with roaming livestock-horses, cattle, camels, sheep, and goats-and tells of how changing times gradually eroded the might of the ancient tribe, once the scourge of the Chinese Empire.

The second part, "Fleeting Years," is a compilation of eight of Hsi's prized older works that bring to life the joys and sorrows of a group of scattered Mongolian people. Part three, "River in a Foreign Land" commemorates her departed father, named Hsi Chen-tuo in Chinese.

In the appendix, Hsi clearly details the overall situation in the country of Mongolia (called "Outer Mongolia" in Chinese), in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and in Russia's Mongolian community. However, in the minds of the more than 5 million Mongols, there is no distinction between an "inner" and "outer" Mongolian. Mongolians traditionally conceptualize the southern desert as their front and the northern desert as their back, and just as in the human body, front and back are indivisible. The borders of the nation of Mongolian people are vague. Think for a minute: if you were atop a steed galloping across great distances, and you encountered someone speeding along the same remote plain, a compatriot who spoke the same language-what need would there then be for distinguishing Inner and Outer Mongolia?

The book also includes the author's own maps of the Mongolian cultural domain and sketches of the grassland culture, making the prosperous world of the 13th-century Mongolian Empire all the more accessible to the reader.

Hsi once studied painting in Brussels, Belgium and has always displayed a penchant for poetry. She admits, "Before I laid eyes on my homeland, my approach to writing was as the poet Hsiao Hsiao said, 'I live and grow alone, thus do I compose poetry and paint.' I never worried much about reader response; all that mattered was whether or not I was satisfied." Today, on the other hand, perhaps on the premise that debate yields truth, she keeps the audience in mind when writing about her homeland, constantly revising so as to render its true face even more clearly.

Getting in touch with her roots

"I always felt mistreated before, like some sort of victim of history. I also used to run into a lot of bias and misunderstanding," Hsi Mu-jung declares candidly.

Hsi's parents both came from the Mongolian plateau; the ancestral home is in Chahar. Hsi's Mongolian name is Mulen, which means "great river." Born in Chongqing, Sichuan, Hsi went to Hong Kong at the age of five. She remembers reading in her fifth-grade textbook about Mongolian brutality, which gave rise to the Chinese folk custom of enclosing messages in moon cakes. (At the end of the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty, Chinese rebels tucked messages into moon cakes to notify each other of their anti-Mongol, revolutionary meetings.) As a result, the youthful Hsi refused to partake of the moon cakes. Hsi came to Taiwan for junior high school at which time she joined the school chorus. When the ensemble sang an impassioned version of "The River Ran Red," Hsi pressed her lips tightly together, issuing her silent protest.

A trip to her homeland in summer, 1989 opened a new chapter of self-understanding for Hsi. In the 12 years since, she has made innumerable trips back. As for the source of such thorough exploration, Hsi says, "At first it probably had to do with my bloodline. You could say I was searching for my roots! But later on, I began to develop a real inquisitiveness about the place, which later expanded to include the reverence with which the people regard nature."

"It's really a difficult feeling to put into words," says Hsi with a candid smile. By reading Mongolian historical documents over a long period of time, Hsi has come to appreciate that this ancient culture still retains her spirit of refinement, robustness, and subtlety.

A tender sapling from the frigid north has taken hold on a southern island, and over a half a century, has grown into a great tree.

In Taiwan, she speaks of the Mongolians; in Mongolia, she speaks of the Taiwanese. Hsi Mu-jung is blessed, and her heart simple.

p.106

Title: The Golden Saddle

Author: Hsi Mu-jung

Publisher: Chiu Ko Publishing Co.

Publishing Date: February 2002

Price: NT$280