"I came for a summer. I never left. The mountains did something to me that I'm still trying to understand."
Achuo arrived in Manigango in her early twenties, drawn by a book she read about the high plateau and a feeling she couldn't quite explain. She had graduated from university in Chengdu, had a teaching certificate, and a vague plan to see more of her own country before settling into something stable.
She took a teaching job at the village school. She told herself it was temporary — one year, maybe two. Ten years later, she is still here.
What happened, by her own telling, was the place. Not any single dramatic event, but a slow accumulation of moments. Teaching children who had never seen a city. Walking to herders' camps and being offered butter tea without anyone having to ask. Sitting with the monks at Zongskya monastery at dawn, hearing chants in a language that no longer has many native speakers.
A different kind of work
Today, Achuo is a writer, a teacher, a vegetable trader by necessity, and the unofficial cultural bridge between Manigango and the outside world. She runs the village library, organizes language classes for both Tibetan and Mandarin, and has spent the last three years quietly documenting the stories of older residents before they are lost.
When we asked her what she was most proud of, she paused for a long time before answering.
"I think it would be the children. Some of them can read now who couldn't before. Some of them have heard stories about their own grandparents' lives that they wouldn't have heard if no one had asked. It's not much. But it's not nothing."
YakStep exists today because of her. When we first visited Manigango in 2023, she showed us around with a patience that bordered on disbelief — disbelief that anyone from outside would actually want to listen. We were the first in a long time. Then we kept coming back. We still do.
What keeps her here
It's a question she gets a lot. The answer has changed over the years. In the beginning, it was a sense of duty to the students. Then, a sense of belonging she hadn't found elsewhere. Now, after a decade, it's something simpler: this is her home. The high altitude, the cold winters, the remoteness — these are not things she endures. They are part of the place she chose.
"Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I had gone back to Chengdu after the first year," she told us. "I think I would have been fine. I would have had a different life, with a different set of problems. But I would not have met these people. I would not have learned to sit still."
Achuo is a co-founder of YakStep. She continues to live in Manigango, and to teach, and to write.