Walking Alone Under Heaven

Walking Alone Under Heaven is a long historical time-travel novel by Li Xin, first published by Zhaohua Press in 2007 in two volumes. The protagonist is Bu Youran, a photographer who lost both parents; during a tomb exploration she accidentally crosses four hundred years of time and space into the Liaodong region in the era of Nurhaci, her soul taking possession of a woman of the Yehe tribe named Dongge. This Dongge is known in historical records as the "Old Woman of the Northern Pass," full name Yehe Nara Buxiyamala; folklore holds that she was born with the prophecy that she "could raise the realm or ruin it," and from the age of ten she became a bargaining chip in the contests and marriage alliances among the Jurchen tribes and the Mongol tribes, drawn into the power struggle between the Jianzhou and the four Hada tribes and the Mongols, and becoming one of Nurhaci's "Seven Grievances." A modern soul placed in such an ill-fated woman must learn to adapt to a strange identity, etiquette, and human relations, maneuver through tribal intrigue and marriage-alliance games, and face the complicated emotions and choices that follow. The novel uses real historical records as its skeleton and fills the gaps between the Yehe old woman and the founding events of the early Qing with fictional emotional narrative, portraying an individual's helplessness and perseverance in the tide of history. The 2007 first edition was a two-volume set; in 2012 China Overseas Chinese Publishing House released a fifth-anniversary edition (three volumes), and in 2017 a new edition (three volumes) appeared; in 2017 the work was adapted into a television series of the same name.