Thank you so much to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for my copy of Winter Pasture by Li Juan in exchange for an honest review. This published February 23, 2021.
I found this book to be written so well, and in such an interesting format, I kept coming back for more. I appreciated getting to learn about the herding culture from an Asian perspective. I found the writing to be so beautiful and I kept wishing could be there with them!

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.

So much for living off grid., Sounds good in my imagination, but absolute horror in reality. The book offers lots of insight into the last of the nomad tribes in the world. And Li Juan's writings can seem almost inspirational in it's descriptions of life with the Kazakh and the landscape. The idea of an underground home sounds intriguing, but ultimatly a yurt full of people in the middle of nowhere, interesting, but not for me. Hardy people and kudos to Li Juan for living it nearly a year and telling the rest of us about her experience. Great book for us armchair adventure travelers!

Li Juan is a Han Chinese woman who lives with her family in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, another region of China that has been and still is undergoing a process of cultural and ethnic cleansing by the Han. So, she decides to follow some Kazakh herders to a place called Winter Pasture.

Yes, the book is skillfully written and translated, but the politics behind all of this are not my cup of tea.

The author lives in northwestern China, and she decides to accompany acquaintances of her family to their winter pasture, where they will spend months living in a small tent while they pasture their cattle, camel, and horses on the steppe. This semi-sedentary lifestyle typified Kazakh herder culture for centuries, if not longer, but has been changed by modern technology and governmental interference. Li Juan's prose, as translated, is often transcendent, and the reader will feel as if they are with Cuma and his family in the freezing cold, lonely pasture. Li Juan learned many lessons about herself, self reliance, her preconceptions and others, about time and patience and just about everything that anyone who steps completely out of their world to immerse themselves in a completely strange place and time will learn. The reader gets to travel with her to this place seen by so few, and experience those same lessons, in this lovely and fascinating memoir.

In 2010, Li Juan, a Han Chinese writer living in the Xinjiang region of China just south of the Altai Mountains, journeys to the Winter Pasture with a family of Kazakh nomadic herders. The Winter Pasture is the herders’ desert land in the south, where less snow allows for better grazing. To protect against the bitter cold, they live in burrows six feet underground, with dried sheep manure for insulation. During the day, they range the flock of hundreds of cattle, sheep, several horses, and a variety of other miscellaneous livestock including surly and stubborn camels, and walk miles collecting snow in giant sacks to melt down for water. Li Juan pens a vivid, intimate, and at times humorous portrait of a dying lifestyle. The year she journeys with Cuma’s family is the last year they are allowed to herd that far south.
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I was immediately captured by Li Juan’s narrative. She speaks Mandarin, while of her “host family” only Cuma and Kama speak her native language well, and Sister-in-Law with whom she spends many of her days speaks almost none; much of Li Juan’s observation reflects a curiosity to learn more about their lifestyle, but through the lens of limited language. Yet, some things like cooking and sharing meals, embroidering, saving the ailing lambs, chasing after the straying camels all transcend language. In short order, I became attached to Li Juan and Kama, imaging the vastness of their deserts as they collected their snow and hoped that they didn’t get lost due to lack of distinction in the landscape. The months in the Winter Pasture are hard, bleak, and frigid, but Li Juan conveys her experience with humor and keen insight.

A perfect book for city-dwellers who romanticize a simple, rural lifestyle and dream about leaving all behind and starting sheep herding. After reading 'Winter Pasture' they would rather abandon such an idea... The life of modern nomads is harsh, dirty, and brutal. I was particularly stricken by their attitude towards animals - stricken but not surprised, as I have no illusions about the reality of the traditional animal husbandry. You won’t find isolation and solitude, either, despite so low population density of these desert plains, because you live in tight confinement of a burrow dug into the ground with the whole family.

It is a very original, strange, beautifully written book, filled with melancholy. It certainly gives an extraordinary insight into an alien, disappearing way of life, but it was hard for me to find some kind of connection with the author. Maybe it's a cultural thing but her self-abasing attitude was sometimes a bit disconcerting.

Thanks to the publisher, Astra Publishing House, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

An interesting topic, but the book wasn’t really a cohesive narrative for me. Full of contradictions and switchbacks in storytelling. This felt like an early draft of a book that could be quite engaging.

As someone truly interested in China, but without sufficient knowledge of Mandarin to read books in this language freely, I always look out for translated fiction and nonfiction. Winter Pasture by Li Juan has been a bestseller in China for a long time, so I couldn't believe my luck to finally be able to read it in translation.

It is a well-written memoir of one woman's winter spent with a group of Kazakh herders in Western China. Since this lifestyle is slowly disappearing, Li Juan's detailed account is all the more valuable.

I was pleasantly surprised at the way the author combines ethnography, a personal memoir and lyrical prose to compose this book. It's a fascinating look not only at the herders and their ways, but also the author as an outsider and her perspective/relationship with them. It's as insightful and entertaining as it is educational in a self-help manner - this book helped me see the value of appreciating the little things, having fewer material possessions and living without the overwhelming amount of technology at every step.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was really interesting overall. I learned a lot about a part of the world that I knew nothing about before and I’m really grateful to have found this book through Netgalley. The author’s accounts of life on the winter pasture were very charming and moving. It left me wanting more, and I will definitely research more about the lives of Kazakh herders in China. I wish that the translator’s note included a little bit of background for English-language readers on the relationship between Han Chinese and the ethnic minorities of China, like the Kazakhs. It would have helped me understand the context of the book better.
I loved the subject matter of the book and I wanted to give it five stars. However, there were a few complaints I had that brought it down to 4 stars:
The author talks about so many pictures that she took, but only includes a few of them in the book. Why mention photos that your readers can’t see? It’s frustrating.
The parts where a kitten was beaten and hit for literally no reason were very difficult to read. Very upsetting.
I wish it was written in chronological order. The random order of events and chapter subjects was a bit confusing and led to some events being mentioned three or more times throughout the book without sufficient explanation anywhere.

Winter Pasture
Having been to China myself, although not to the area around Ulungur, I was curious to read about the nomadic way of life. This biographic story gives the reader a view into some of the most lonely months in the lives of some of the most lonely people.

Li Juan tells her story, with humor, of traveling south with the camels, sheep, cows and horses where she and the family she has joined, will live throughout the winter. The story is divided into different sections, each highlighting a different part of life on the Winter Pasture. You get to know the people she lives with, but also the visitors that come over during the winter months. You learn about their ways of herding the animals, creating the sheep pen, maintenance work on their home and the lovely food they eat and the beautiful embroideries they make in their free time. Overall it captures life on the winter pasture really well.

What I liked about the book is that it was divided in different sections, in which Li Juan highlights different experiences or bundles of information. For example, the first part focuses on the journey to the winter pasture and what life is like once they arrive there. Another part focuses solely on getting to know the characters more - which makes you love them, and find them annoying at other times. A great feature in the book were the pictures from life on the pasture. I would have loved to see even more of them!

The reason why I gave Winter Pasture 4 stars is that it does a good job of describing the life of nomads and the loneliness that comes with the lifestyle. But, throughout the story some scenes are repeated, in a slightly different way than before, but nonetheless it's repetition. I came to find this a bit annoying at times. Also, I have noticed several spelling mistakes in the translation, such as words missing. Keeping this in mind, I decided to give 4 out of 5 stars.

If you are interested in books about China, and want to learn more about the Kazakh herders, I would definitely recommend this book. It doesn't have a major plottwist, since it is non-fiction, but nonetheless a very interesting read!

A Han Chinese woman in her 30's spends the winter with a group of Kazakh herders. This is her detailed memoir, a fascinating look at an almost-vanished way of life.

This is an ethnography of a single family living in a burrow, dug into the sands in the desert of Western China. We get to know Cuma, the husband, his wife and teenaged daughter, as Li Juan learns how to survive with them in the snowy wastes for five months. It's dark and very, very cold. The flocks (sheep, cattle, horses, camels) have to be taken out to feed at first light every day. The diet is unvaried. Because it's a drought year, there's not much snow to melt for water, so they hike for hours every day to fill big bags with snow. What could be so fascinating?

Well, Li Juan is a very insightful and respectful woman. She rarely bemoans her decision to live with the family. She keeps detailed notes and has a wonderfully self-deprecating tone. Her patience and ability to tolerate harsh circumstances are remarkable. And although she might make jokes about her Kazakh family, she never looks down on them or is a cultural snob.

* This is an excellent description of what it's like to live within another culture where you don't speak the language, and must try to get by with limited communication skills.

* You can't help but be amazed at the fortitude, perseverance, and toughness of the Kazakh herders. There's nothing much to do. They spend all day long out on a flat desert guarding and guiding animals. A rare luxury is a cell phone that can play music, or a TV they finally get to work with intermittent reception and shows they can't understand in Mandarin. Their clothes get so filthy that they become stiff, since there is so little water to wash with. The big entertainment is when another family stops by to visit.

* Yet somehow, Li Juan sees the beauty in their existence, and in the stark world around them. The book is packed with lengthy descriptions of the night sky, the grasses of the desert, the intricacies of herding different animals.

This book definitely causes you to consider First World Problems in a new light, and admire the resilience of "simpler" cultures. Many of its insights will remain with me for a long time. The book reminded me a lot of Peter Freuchen's "Book of the Eskimos" -- a similar set up, a similar respect for the grit it takes for nomads to survive.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance review copy #WinterPasture #NetGalley.

Vividly written an adventure that amazed me.Li Juan a young woman decides to travel with a group of herders living with them in their world, I wash amazed by their lives their daily blivinng.I found this book so exciting so interesting I couldn’t put it down,I wilk be highly recommending,#netgalley#winterpasture

Winter Pasture is an insightful memoir about the author's adventure living and herding with the Kazakh herders. She journeys with the family to the remotest parts of the desert where she lives with them in an underground one-room burrow built with manure. Her days are spent herding camels, sheep, and cattle in the extreme cold, building pens for the animals, and gathering snow to be used for water. Li Juan finds the nomadic lifestyle to be harsh, exhausting, and lonely, at times.

The author writes with humor and honesty as she describes the family members and their little quirks, especially Cuma, the husband, father, and drunk. She captures the natural beauty that exists all around her as she hikes the sand dunes and rides horses. The little known lifestyle of the Kazakh herders is slowly dying out, but the author gives tribute to the people and their way of life in this unique and captivating memoir.

What initially drew me in Li Juan’s memoir of a winter spent with a Kazakh herding family was its glimpse into the modern-day nomadic lifestyle, or at least as it is for some. However, as much as I genuinely liked learning about the mundane routines and array challenges managing a mix of horses, camels, sheep, goats, and cows in the snowy Xinjiang grasslands, what proved to be an unexpected bonus was just home intimately I was able to know the author’s host family. Thanks to the rich detail in her documentation, I feel like I was able to get to know their lovable quirks and their irritating flaws so well that it made me feel as if I too was living packed alongside them in their burrow for several chilly months.

Although it’s been translated from the Chinese it was originally written in, that was absolutely no impediment to my enjoyment of “Winter Pasture.” Li Juan’s writing did marvelous work taking me far, far away, out onto the plains of northwest China and directly the thick of the daily lives of a particular herding clan.

Thanks for the opportunity to review. What a fascinating story! I found it compelling yet easy to read. It wasn't a quick read, but it also didn't slog. This was one of those stories that stuck with me, wanting to share what the author did. Going out there and living like that is something so foreign to me but it was deeply compelling. I'd love to watch a series about it.

Newly translated and now many more people can revel in the journey. I can see why this book has such a reputation and am glad it’s now available for more of us.

Li Juan spends a very rugged winter amongst the land and surrounded by nature that she brings to life as a painter with a brush might.
Deciding to do something bold and different Li joins with a traditional herding family as they move their horses, camels, sheep and cattle to winter pasture which is many days frozen trek from home. There Li works the land and overwinters in a setting unlike anything she’s encounters before and shares the experiences with the animals and the family with us lucky readers.

Definitely a perfect read for a cozy winter day.

One of my favourite books of all time is 'Wolf Totem' by Jiang Rong (a partly autobiographical account of the author's time with herders in Inner Mongolia), so I jumped at the chance to review a book that I expected to be similar in a lot of ways, although of course, the herders of 'Winter Pasture' are Kazakh rather than Mongolian.

Unfortunately, the author's delivery meant I felt a lot less engaged than I'd expected I would be. It's more or less in chronological order, but still manages to jump frenetically between different topics. It felt akin to trying to drive while a child yammers behind you for six hours about all the things they did at camp. Neither was my reader experience aided by the prodigious use of exclamation marks - I could've done with 95% fewer of those.

There are occasional sparks to the book - the author's prose could be strikingly beautiful, and from an anthropological point of view, the glimpse into the lives of the herders is comprehensive, detailed, and fascinating, from their relationships with their livestock to how they build their homes while on the herding routes. But the book is dearly in need of thorough editing - it's LONG. Ultimately, the book is neither profound enough, nor funny enough, and not as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be. Nor as memorable, I suspect.

(With thanks to Astra House and NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review)

This book was Li Juan’s first hand account, translated from the original Chinese, of her journey from the Ulungur River to the Heavenly Mountains, in the company of three nomadic herders. Li was a single woman, so her mother made the arrangements for a Kazakh man named Cuma to host her. Cuma owed her family money. Li’s time with him, his wife, and daughter, would cancel that debt.

In spring, the herders moved north with the melting snow; in autumn, they were driven slowly back south. They were sometimes subjected to harsh, sub-zero degree weather. They collected snow for drinking, cooking, and limited bathing. They sewed their own patchwork clothing from hides, fur, and wool. When the herders rested, they lived in strategically located, mud-lined burrows, six feet underground, insulated with sheep dung. The herd consisted of 100 cows and horses, 30 camels, and 500 sheep.

Cuma and his wife and daughter were introduced early in the book, primarily within the context of their family. Later, each character was given his or her own chapter. By that time, though, the reader had already met them; the backtracking was distracting.

Several key premises were proven untrue as the story unfolded. Cuma was presented as a benevolent, hard working herder who loved the animals. But then he shockingly abused a kitten by slamming it to the ground, and later, nearly blinding it. In another scene, he sliced off the ear of a puppy. He was gradually unmasked as an abusive drinker, compulsive liar, ill-tempered bully, and a misogynist. Regardless, the author continued to praise his virtues. Li’s mother was at least aware of Cuma’s drinking; her judgment was questionable in entrusting her daughter to his care.

The herders were not as isolated and disconnected as imagined. They occasionally traveled by motorcycle, had cell phones with spotty reception, and enjoyed a serviceable television. Li and the family, living together under those conditions, would seem to bond over time. But in the end, there was no mutual affinity nor enjoyment in each other’s company. There was an extensive glossary of Chinese terms at the back of the book. The placement would be helpful for physical copies, but not for an e-book. The story rambled like the herders, with no particular plot, dramatic high points, nor character growth. The premise of a foreign adventure was a good one, but the execution was flawed.

I received an electronic advance reader copy from NetGalley in September 2020 in exchange for my honest review. Illustrations were missing. Publication date: February 23, 2021.

Li Juan lives with her mother in the Atai Mountains in Northern China. She writes about her life there and when encouraged by friends, she decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their menagerie of sheep, camels and cows to a winter pasture. This book details her journey the the Heavenly Mountains, where she helps the family wrangle their vast herd of critters, memorable builds an underground home out of manure and other out of the ordinary tasks. Li Juan introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters and a landscape both beautiful and cruel in equal measures. In a time when we cannot leave our own country, this book provided me a window into a world I didn’t even know existed. An extraordinary read