Yes­ter­day, my teach­er Wangmo and I went for a walk beside the bridge to the right of the school. Resem­bling a golden-col­oured bal­loon, the set­ting sun was about to dis­ap­pear behind the shoulder of the west­ern moun­tain. The fact that the entire envir­on­ment breathed a tran­quil­lity akin to that of nomad­ic grass­lands was due to it being a Sunday, a hol­i­day, as well as the traffic being extremely light.

  Inside the tea house loc­ated to the right of the school there were many Indi­ans, young and old who were engaged in wel­come applause and shrill exclam­a­tions whilst watch­ing tele­vi­sion. It was highly likely that a tre­mend­ously sat­is­fy­ing event had occurred.

 At that time, Gen Wangmo asked an Indi­an acquaint­ance for inform­a­tion. The extremely joy­ous Indi­an excitedly replied, “Not only have we Indi­ans suc­cess­fully send a satel­lite to the moon, but we’re also the first to announce to the world the news of the exist­ence of water on the Moon. Just look! If we’re not joy­ful at this news, what can we be joy­ful about?” And he showed us the news being broad­cast on television.

How­ever, Gen Wangmo’s face did not express the same joy­ful­ness as those Indi­ans When I imme­di­ately asked her why, Gen Wangmo said, “The fact that we are able to travel to oth­er plan­ets in depend­ence upon human intel­li­gence makes me happy. Moreover, it is our hosts, the Indi­ans who have achieved this. How­ever, the astro­nauts are not Tibetan. One day, if there comes a time where we are also able to send a satel­lite to oth­er plan­ets like that, I will prob­ably be jump­ing for joy.”

 When I returned to my bed­room, I reflec­ted on Gen Wangmo’s words. We ourselves do not even pos­sess a piece of land the size of a palm of the hand whilst also hav­ing to live on land belong­ing to oth­ers. I also real­ised that from the point of view of mod­ern sci­entif­ic devel­op­ment, we were underdeveloped.

If I wanted to see a truly smil­ing expres­sion on Gen Wangmo’s face, I knew I needed to achieve out­stand­ing res­ults through study­ing the tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern sub­jects comprehensively.