Wolf Totem

As a follow-up to The Good Earth, we'd wanted to read a contemporary book about China, written by a Chinese. What we got was a book, written by a Han Chinese, about Mongolia.

About a Mongolia that no longer exists. One in which the grassland Mongolians were still nomadic herders, shifting their herds of horses and sheep across the vast grassland, in constant battle to protect their animals from the packs of wolves, but realizing that the wolves themselves protected the health of the grassland by keeping all the herbivores in check.

But during the cultural revolution, this ecological equilibrium was seen as one of the old anachronisms that needed to be swept away, along with the wolves and the marmots. And the nomadic life. In the end, the grassland was turned over to farming and the nomads moved to houses with fenced enclosures. And the desert started moving in.

The novel is told from the point of view of Chen Zhen, a Han Chinese who has been 'invited' to move to the countryside and take up the rural life. He works as a sheep herder, supplementing the Mongolian production brigade, and adapts to the Mongolian way of life, learning from an elder how they have survived in their inhospitable land. He's fascinated by wolves, whom the Mongolians revere, and, perhaps after reading too much Jack London, decides to kidnap and raise a wolf cub. The experiment works for a while, but as the cub grows he turns into a thing torn between two worlds, and able to live in neither. He never learned to be a wolf, and cannot survive in the wild. But cannot be tamed to live as a dog in man's world.