This has given rise to the local legend that its shade can actually be found some two thousand miles away in Tibet, the temple’s spiritual home.

[11] Jessica Kiang reviewing at Berlin Film Festival, for Variety praised the cinematography and music writing, "The warmth of Piao Songri's photography is a constant, as is his facility for the offbeat framing of even the most everyday encounter, using doorways or reflections or a quickly shifting focus."

Concluding Kiang wrote, "The film ambles onward, it reveals its arcs of change not in dramatic showdowns or sudden revelations, but in ellipses, in the occasional mysterious fold in chronology and, most rewardingly, in the casual, unforced repetition of certain motifs.

"[3] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter calling the film a contemplative film of quiet rewards, stated, "Piao Songri's loose, fluid camerawork trails the protagonist, played with soulful intelligence by Xin, there’s both a haunting sense of all that he’s lost and a newfound self-knowledge that perhaps might propel him forward with greater openness.

"[12] Lee Marshall for ScreenDaily wrote in review that "The film’s delicacy of touch comes through not only in the bittersweet love story at its centre, but in a wealth of seemingly marginal details.