At a book launch ceremony in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in late July, Qiu shared the motivation behind writing this book. As a writer born at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, he has long dreamed of creating a literary map focused on the Xiyu (Western Regions), which encompassed today's Xinjiang and parts of Central Asia.
In 2024 and 2025, he published three novels about the six ancient cities associated with Xiyu and the ancient Silk Road — Kucha (or Qiuci), Gaochang, Niya, Loulan, Hotan, and Dunhuang. When reportage author Xu Jian asked him to join other writers, including A Lai and Shi Yifeng, in writing books about Qinghai province, he shifted his focus to the Qilian Mountains, which served as both a bridge and a boundary between the Central Plains and Xiyu in ancient times.
To write the book, Qiu, 57, spent several years making multiple journeys into the heart of the Qilian Mountains. Places such as the edge of the Gobi Desert in the Hexi Corridor, the alpine pastures, salt lakes, glaciers, the Dunhuang cave murals, and the Heishuiguo site ruins in Zhangye, Gansu province, where archaeological excavations have revealed a Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement dating to approximately 2100-1600 BC, have all become crucial points in verifying the historical documents he studied.
Drawing from sources such as Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Han, A Comprehensive History of Qinghai, and Chronicles of Qilian County, as well as plant identification manuals, mineral exploration reports, Tang Dynasty transportation studies, and the expedition records of the 19th-century Russian geographer and explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky, Qiu blends historical records and rigorous scientific research with vivid firsthand experiences.
The author's candid personal travel reflections impart warmth to this biography. The glaciers, meadows, rock paintings, and beacons of the Qilian Mountains transform from objects of observation into internalized life experiences.
Qiu spent over a year thinking about the best way to structure the book.
"The mountains have existed far longer than the history of humanity; they will always be there, while we are just temporary visitors. We humans should not be too arrogant, for we are so small in comparison," he says.
As a result, he moves away from a "human-centered" narrative, allowing the mountains themselves to become the story's main focus and offering a comprehensive exploration of the Qilian Mountains through seven perspectives: geology, plants, animals, history, culture, literature, and travel experiences.
