Review Summaries

• Many readers respond to the novel as both an adventure story and an ecological warning, praising its forceful depiction of the grasslands and the respect accorded to wolves. Its length and weight can be demanding, but the book is valued for how strongly it makes the relationship between nature and human ambition felt.

Reviews

• An amazing insight into the life of the Mongolian nomad, as well as the recent history of the region. I gained an understanding of the symbiotic relationship of life on the grassland, the reason this culture still survives today and the threats it faces - all wrapped in an engaging narrative.

• There are probably many books written on many animals but are there any written as extensively as the one on wolves. Few details out nuances of wolf as an animal to revere, not an animal that is greedy and selfish. An animal that places dignity above everything else. Read this book to be in awe of this intelligent, cunning and family animal - Wolf

• During Mao's Cultural Revolution of the late 1960's, a young college student from Beijing named Lu Jiamin was "sent down" like so many of his fellow classmates to live among and learn from the peasants. In Lu's case, his "down" was actually "up" as he was sent to the far northern planes of Inner Mongolia. Some thirty years later, that young man had become a senior academician back again in Beijing and as well the pseudonymous author as Jiang Rong of a startling (for mainland China) book first published in 2004 under the name "Lang Tuteng." The book became an instant best-seller in China, spawning enormous Internet debate along with pirated copies, unauthorized spin-offs and sequels, and reported a movie version in the works. Recently translated by the venerable Howard Goldblatt and published in English under the name WOLF TOTEM (a direct translation of Lang Tuteng), the book has already been honored as the first-ever recipient of the Man Asian Literary Prize (the Asian equivalent of the Man Booker Prize for English Literature). Although drawn almost autobiographically from Jiang Rong's personal experiences, WOLF TOTEM is essentially an allegorical novel. Its hero is the author's alter-ego, the young and impressionable "sent down" college student Chen Zhen. Chen and other students are assigned to live with sheepherders and learn their ways. Along the way, he learns about animal husbandry and the customs of a Chinese minority group, hunts wolves, steals a wolf cub from its mother's den in order to raise it, and watches the sudden, unstoppable intrusion of Beijing's destructive bureaucracy into Mongolia's life and lands (as embodied to the point of caricature by the stunningly indifferent Bao Shungui). Of course, the allegorical aspect of the novel is the proximate cause of its notoriety in China. Jiang Rong makes clear that the aggressive wolves represent historically the warlike nomadic tribes such as the Mongols. They are the meat-eaters, the makers of history, and their spirit has been transferred over time to the West. By contrast, the passive and meek sheep represent the Han Chinese by his estimation - settlers, farmers, vegetable eaters, ruiners of the great grasslands, and the people mortally fearful of wolves. Through Chen Zhen's gradual awakening to Mongolian life and that of wolves, the author questions the spirit and soul of the Han Chinese, the massive majority of mainland Chinese people. In a very real sense, WOLF TOTEM calls into question the Chinese national character. It is this national psyche that has been habitually belabored within China by feelings of powerlessness in the face of the West, from the march of the Eight Powers into Beijing in 1900 to sayings like, "In the West, even the moon is bigger." It is also this national inferiority complex that motivates China's responses to currency devaluation, the Olympics, Tibet, and nearly every other aspect of its present-day relationship to the West. Jiang Rong clearly poses other awkward questions as well about Chinese government policy. The Chinese steamroll blindly or blithely over Mongolian culture and tradition; even the well-intentioned Chen Zhen violates centuries-old custom of not raising a wolf out of self-centered curiosity. Equally discomfiting, the Han Chinese are portrayed as horrific despoilers of grasslands that have supported nomadic tribal existence for thousands of years. Later scenes in the book portray a virtual Mongolian Eden of rich grassland, pure water, and abundant wildlife callously plundered to destruction by ignorant and avaricious Chinese officials and "settlers." Heart-rending descriptions of Chinese wolf hunting by rifle, mass killing of marmots, and slaughter of swans generate strong emotional feelings of anger and irretrievable loss in the reader. The sense of loss is palpable, particularly as expressed through Chen's "adoptive father" Old Man Bilgee. At times, old Bilgee's powerless horror at unfolding events and inescapable loss was reminiscent of Iron Eyes Cody, the "crying Indian" from the 1970's anti-littering television commercial campaign. On the plus side, Jiang Rong's book is a wonder of wolf naturalism, a literary work that draws pictures of life on the Mongolian steppe as effectively as a National Geographic photo spread. While not nearly competitive with the literary strengths of Cormac McCarthy, some of the "wolf as hunter" and "wolf as hunted" scenes are reminiscent of McCarthy's extraordinary opening scene of man versus wolf in THE CROSSING. In fact, the writing at times waxes so lyrical over wolves and their seemingly extraordinary hunting skills as to border on unbelievable, totemic in the most pantheistically religious sense of that word. The author's intimate descriptions of nomadic herding life in the harsh Mongolian lands are equally powerful. For a mainland Chinese audience perhaps not yet accustomed to the message of ecological systems and symbiosis, Jiang Rong's exposition of the living relationships among herdmen, sheep, horses, wolves, gazelle, marmots, and even field mice must also seem positively revelatory. On the minus side, WOLF TOTEM's literary merits are somewhat less stratospheric. As the main character, Chen Zhen lacks the necessary internal depth that would enable the reader truly to empathize with him. We never learn anything about his pre-Mongolian life or background, his family, or his feelings about having his education disrupted by Mao's notions of re-education. The wolf cub Chen adopts and hopes to raise to adulthood is in many ways a more empathetic figure, as are the old wolf-hunting dogs Erland and Yellow. Jiang Rong's writing is unnecessarily polemical and too often strident if not didactic. A twenty-page Epilogue taking place as a return visit some thirty years later does not fit the main text stylistically and only detracts by overexposition from the story Jiang Rong has already told. WOLF TOTEM adds yet another to the list of recent artistic works, mostly cinematic, that idealize Mongolia as a sort of lost Eden or lost innocence (see for example, the movies THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL, MONGOLIAN PING PONG, THE CAVE OF THE YELLOW DOG, and even the current release of TUYA'S MARRIAGE) This is a wondrously entertaining story and remarkable if only for having originated out of mainland China. Read this book for its fascinating descriptions of wolf behavior and nomadic life and also for the light of self-examination and self-doubt it shines on a growing national power.

• This semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of Chen, an urban Han Chinese student who is sent into the countryside in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, and his attempts to raise a wolf cub captured from the wild. It is also the story of the environmental tragedy brought about on the grassland by the arrival of agricultural migrants and others who do not appreciate the delicate balance the population of Mongolian herders and the wolves, gazelles and other wildlife of the grassland. The grassland and its way of life leads Chen and his fellow students to discuss a number of contrasts, such as the 'sheepishness' of the Han Chinese versus the more 'vigourous' Mongolians, 'Chinese' and 'Western' culture, and the settled agricultural way of live compare to the life of the nomads. Although many of these discussions are fascinating, they do tend to follow the same pattern; it seems like the Han Chinese can do no good on the grassland, while the Mongolians can do no wrong. The truth, I suspect, is more complex than this. One of the most fascinating - although overlooked - aspects of the novel is the fact that the Cultural Revolution actually allows at least some of the 'sent down' youth to experience more independence and freedom than would otherwise have been possible. It is rare to find this in fiction, although I have read similar accounts in memoirs of the period. Compared to most 'western' novels, the characters are relatively underdeveloped and often seem to exist only to help put across the author's own views. However, in a way the people are relatively unimportant in the book; the wolfcub and the changing grassland are the real central characters.

• The simplistic but powerful description of the environment and the balance achieved by the animals and people living there and how it was changed and destroyed by relatively small changes. Highly recommend

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