This group of poems has recorded f rus both the mystery and humanity of the pople of Tibet. The 14 monologues - character sketches in free verse - seem somehow to catch in words of the often evanescent spirit of the deep valleys and high plateaus of this strange land. 

About the Author

Robert B. Ekvall was born in Gansu, China, to American missionaries and grew up on the Tibetan frontier. Fluent in Chinese and deeply familiar with Central Asian cultures, he returned to China in the 1920s as a missionary and educator. His early work among Tibetan nomads later informed his ethnographic writings.

During World War II, Ekvall and his son were interned by the Japanese in Southeast Asia. After a prisoner exchange in 1943, he joined the U.S. Army at the urging of General Joseph Stilwell. As a Chinese-speaking captain, he served in the Burma campaign, acting as interpreter and liaison between Chinese and American forces, and later helped coordinate intelligence efforts in wartime Chongqing.

In 1945, Ekvall was wounded during a mission in Lanzhou and soon after lost his son in a military accident—a blow that marked him deeply. Postwar, he served under General George Marshall’s mission in Beijing and later as assistant military attaché, traveling across western China.

Ekvall’s second marriage, to Hungarian-Swedish linguist Eva Kunfi in the late 1940s, produced two children, Erik (b. ~1950) and Karen (b. ~1956). Settling in Seattle, he chaired the University of Washington’s Inner Asia Research Project, curated Asian ethnology at the Burke Museum, and authored seminal studies such as Fields on the Hoof: Nexus of Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralism (1968) and the memoir Faithful Echo (1960). His scholarship combined rigorous field observation with empathy for Tibetan pastoral life, influencing a generation of Central-Asianists. 

Robert Brainerd Ekvall died in May 1983. Soldier, missionary, linguist, and anthropologist, he navigated the upheavals of twentieth-century Asia with a rare ability to interpret cultures as adroitly as he translated languages—earning a place among the most versatile “China Hands” of his era.