“Fasten your seatbelts, we are on our final approach”, blared the speakers overhead. I stared out the window to get a glimpse, only to see the outside world completely shrouded in a thick white mist. After a few minutes of seemingly flying nowhere, the plane landed with loud thud, and the wheels wailed loudly as they scraped against the asphalt.
 
At an elevation of nearly 3,600m, Lhasa Gonggar Airport is one of the highest airports in the world. The only thing higher is the skill of the pilot who’s able to land when the runway begins to appear when the plane is a hundred meters or so from touchdown. As the passengers walked out of the plane, almost all let out an audible “Wow” or “Amazing”, as they took in the breathless beauty of the rugged snowcapped Himalayan mountains. For me, the sight felt bland, and for the first time, a bit dizzy.
 
        “Home”
 
Sitting on a rustic 90s coach at the bus terminal, I repeatedly turned on and off my phone’s cellular function, desperately trying to catch a stray signal, which ultimately allowed a barrage of meaningless messages to pass onto my screen. However, anything at this point was welcome distraction to the six-hour rollercoaster-like journey (literally, as roads can ascend 100-200 meters only to go down just as much only minutes apart) to my home town Yushu.
 
As the coach began pulling out of the transit bay, I watched helplessly as the little bars on my phone went from two to one to flatlining. I placed my phone into my bag, as if I was giving it a proper burial with a part of me as the burial goods. As the coach left the main terminal and onto the semi-paved roads, it felt like crossing the border between two very different dimensions of my life: one with social media trends, fashion icons, and new developments updated and notified on a minute-by-minute basis, while the other with an extended aging family, lengthy traditions, and anachronistic tales that echo the ancient past. One never stays still, while the other refuses to move.
 
As I stared through the fog-covered windows, my reflection stared back at me with a pale face and thin eyes. I instinctively picked up my hand mirror to check if my makeup was still there. Confident it was, I looked out the window again. The girl in the reflection was me but without the city-ness, which promises a sense of novelty that never seems to fade. Her tired eyes long for more than a bed to sleep in. She misses the peace of her home, on the hill where she was born, with her family and no one else. As the coach traverses along the mountainside and into the valley, the blanket of snow gives way to lush fields of green, as if mother nature is awakening from her slumber. The sunlight cutting through the window shades happened to land right on my chest and arms. The warm embrace, along with the incessant rocking of the bus, lulled me to sleep.
 
I had a dream, a dream with no entity, a vanity colored by the familiar green. Then, from nowhere, came the spirits. Shapeless and translucent as they are, I felt myself drawn to them out of familiarity. Wandering in the air, twisting their forms, they synchronized in a slow dance, as if the ones that lay beneath this land long before humans had arrived burst forth from an ancient painting. Slowly, something else emerged. One, two, droplets of other colors emerged on the canvas; I saw them being mixed with the greenness. The single sight of green changes into this colorful image, so fancy and energetic that it reminded me of my first glance at the capital. Ancient and peaceful, they blended in the new picture as if they have never come, but there they were, surging back up whenever my eyes are worn out by those bright colors, looking for a sight to escape.
 
As the coach rolled to a stop, I was awoken again by the overhead announcement “This is the stop for Yushu. Departing passengers please remember to pick up your luggage from compartment below.” I picked up my backpack and hurried to the front to get off, but before I even finished stepping off the bus, I was met with a chorus of welcoming greetings and hugs. Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle, along with many others I didn’t immediately recognize came to pick me up.
 
“Have you eaten?”, “How was the trip?”, “You’ve grown so much!”
 
These phrases that everyone is familiar with but only come from those closest to us made the pit in my stomach tighten. I wasn’t sure how to respond to all them, so I simply said,
 
        “I’m home!”