Thirty-one years ago, an Herder baby boy was born in a tent with a cry.
The mother of the baby died that very night, and according to the customs of the Herder people, the baby who caused his mother's death should also have been abandoned—the underlying logic of the custom was harsh and realistic, for a newborn without its mother could not survive.
The baby's father was off warring with Queye Khan, and it was his grandmother who took pity on him and brought him back to the tent, placing him in steaming hot sawdust.
For the first three days, they hired another nursing mother with two cowhides to breastfeed him, and later fed him with cotton cloths dipped in mare's milk.
When two months passed and they determined that the dark-skinned child would survive, his grandfather took him to see the Shaman.
The Shaman named the child, Koshi Hazi—child raised on mare's milk.
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