Achuo
"I only meant to stay one season. It was the mountains that kept me—and the sky, the earth, the people."
2014 · 2015 · ……
When She Came to the Plateau
In 2014, after finishing her undergraduate studies, Achuo chose the latter between a city job and volunteer teaching at a highland monastery.
The plateau turned from early autumn to deep winter. She lived day and night with thirty-odd Tibetan children. She taught them pinyin, Mandarin, arithmetic; they taught her to make fire, fetch water, burn charcoal, and to cherish flowers, small birds, and life itself.
She was given a name: Teacher Yuanyuan.
More than ten years later, her students have grown up—some became monks, some carvers of sutras and Buddha images on wood, some horse trainers… they still call her Teacher, Yuanyuan, or Sister.
The bond built in the distant past, in their childhood or teenage years, has never faded.
2014 · ten years on
When She Began Service
She once worried that the children could not get enough fresh vegetables. She raised money, and for ten years bought fresh vegetables for them. The small cause grew to cover others—funding hip surgery, brain surgery, limb-reconnection surgery, tuberculosis treatment.
She also collected clothes, medicine, books, and school supplies, and delivered them to where they were most needed.
2021 · to present
When She Began to Write
Years later, she arrived at this small town carrying three dreams, after a serious car accident and several days of detour. She planned to spend an entire winter here writing stories of distant galaxies.
Writing became addictive; from then on she did not stop.
Manigango—this town far from the world—is both a quiet creative environment and a shelter for the spirit. Living here, writing the land and its people, through years of deeper and shallower interactions with locals, she built family-like relationships with many people, almost without realizing it.
She occasionally travels, visits other lands, delves into their history, civilization, and present conditions, distills the essence of stories, writes, creates.
She is not a travel-writing author. She is a traveler of life and time.
Between Two Identities
As a Bridge
Between the identity of "outsider" and that of a "local" deeply rooted in Manigango, she saw—a possibility of becoming a "bridge."
To share this vast land—the forests, snow mountains, and lakes on it.
To share the people here—their ancient, sustainable way of life and the philosophy within it.
To share the town's acceptance of people and the solace it offers.
To share, too, the wildness of the land, the adventures one may have in it; the rare and original products of the land—step by step.
And to bring in the broad vision and abundance of the outside world.
Even if only a small step, she wants to try to optimize resource allocation and put everything to its best use.
yakstep.life
So She Decided to Build YakStep.life
It is not a travel website that only lets you see exotic landscapes, taste local food, and stay in hotels or homestays.
It is not a commercial site about a Tibetan town for you to consume, shop, or satisfy curiosity.
Nor is it a personal website showcasing Achuo's personal information.
It is an entrance to another life. It allows different people, by appropriate fate, by the existence of this land, to draw themselves out of their former lives here, to interface and collide more deeply with another kind of life—so that this collision creates fresh blood for our lives.
When you leap into another time and space, you can experience the nomadic life of Tibetan herders—rough, far from modern civilization, vast and magnificent, full of natural wildness: hiking, drifting down a hidden river, sliding down a frozen mountain stream, riding a motorcycle with a Tibetan through unruly hills, riding a horse into a valley that has never been revealed to the world; or picnicking in the quiet wilderness, meditating, listening to the voice of nature and your own soul, watching the sunset and the Milky Way in a place so vast that only heaven, earth, and the divine remain—briefly forgetting yourself, letting yourself go, returning to the universe.
What She Has Written
Put Down in Words
Words in many forms—published books, published works, an unpublished novel, and songs now online.
Her Book
When the Fireball Crossed Manigango
2025 Daofeng Book Award · Travel Literature of the Year
A prose collection about ten years of life in a highland small town—snow mountains, monasteries, pastures; the turn of seasons; children, monks, herders, their lives, their hardship and joy; yaks, crows, wildlife, their fates; and the writer herself, her resolve to set out and the life she rebuilt.
Available on JD · Dangdang · Amazon China and other major retailers
Published Works
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Poetry series "Poems for Manigango"
2015, published in Shi Kan (诗刊)
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Prose "The Sweeping Monk \"Zi-Ga\""
2024 Global Chinese Literature Xingyun Award
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Prose "A Crow Named A-Fu Came"
2025 Feng Zikai Prose Award
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Novella "Jeremy's Transatlantic Voyage"
2026, Issue 4 of Fang Cao (芳草)
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and others…
And the Unpublished Novels
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A story of life purification on a distant galaxy.
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A story of modern people stranded after the loss of desire.
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A story of a drug-lord family dissolving its own existence.
Excerpts & Serial
Achuo's essays, field notes, and excerpts from works in progress or just finished—will land here first.
The Woman Who Stayed
In her early twenties, Achuo read a book and came to Manigango with a feeling she could not name. Ten years on, she is still here.
Life at 4,200 Meters
What it actually feels like to live, year after year, at an altitude where the air thins and the sky sits uncomfortably close.
A Classroom in the Wild
One morning with the children of the Wilderness Classroom. What they taught me, what I taught them, and the things no one can teach.
The Night the Fireball Crossed
A meteor streaked across the plateau. The next morning, the herders told its story.
Zongskya: The Monastery at the Edge of the World
Built in the 13th century, Zongskya Monastery survived war, revolution, and isolation. What I saw inside its walls one morning.
Lyrics She Wrote
Take Flight, The Weightless, and The Audience of Love are collected on the album Pillow Book (枕边书).
Echoes from the World
Not everyone will go to Manigango. But some have read what she wrote, and recognized something.
Wenxue Bao (《文学报》)
"There is a kind of spiritual power in Achuo, hard to describe, you have to call it The Force—like the Force in Star Wars, a power from the entire earth, the entire universe."
— Chen Lingyun (Editor, Zhuke Books)
"At first I thought Manigango was your hometown, then realized it is not. All of these are intimate relationships you built in a completely unfamiliar environment—I find that quite extraordinary."
— Li Yingdi (Writer, Reporter)
Book Conversation · 2025
Green BAZAAR
"This is not just a story about leaving the city, retreating to Tibet, embracing nature. It is not just a story of courage and the search for stillness. Achuo's troubles, anxieties, and restlessness were not wholly soothed by the purity of Manigango."
— Meng Tongzhu (Writer)
Profile · 2026
New Weekly · Daofeng Book Award
"Life is a journey against the wind, and I am a traveler too."
— Achuo (On stage, quoting Su Shi)
On Stage · 2026-04-17, Quanzhou
Southern People Weekly
"A bug's life can be respected this much. Human beings, sometimes, cannot."
— Achuo (Interview)
Profile · 2024
Autumn 2024
The Wilderness Classroom
In autumn 2024, Achuo and her monk friend—a sky-burial master—built a Wilderness Classroom on the grassland. She and the local people renovated the house, set up the classroom, so the grassland children also had a bright place to learn.
But the story between her and this small town, this land, and these people is not over. The next chapters will be created by Achuo together with friends coming from all over the world.
Why YakStep
"Here, there is no lack of mountains, no lack of people, yaks, and all wildness and beauty. What is missing is a reason for young people to stay."
Every time you come, every trek you join, every product you take away, becomes a reason for us to stay—a decent income, not forced departure. We deliberately limit capacity, to preserve the balance of this plateau.
Achuo stayed, and so this site exists.
Contact
Write to Achuo
Press, collaboration, commissions, trek inquiries—Achuo reads and replies to every one herself.
achuo@yakstep.life
