Wolf Totem

Wolf Totem

Those who study modern China know that the Communist government struggles with the yearnings and demands of its 55 ethnic minorities. What immediately comes to mind are the calls from Tibetans for more autonomy, or independence itself, and the complaints of the Uyghur people concerning religious and political discrimination in Xinjiang, the the northwest part of China. The majority Han people have been moving into both Tibet and Xinjiang, thereby changing the native cultures there.

In the last few months, we have been hearing complaints from the Mongolian people in China. Mongols are upset that so many Han have moved into Inner Mongolia and disrupted their pastoral way of life. The Mongols have staged protests against the environmental damage that comes with settled agriculture, the strip-mining of coal, the building of highways, the damming of rivers, and the overgrazing of land.

Inner Mongolian grasslands

Background. The Mongols and Han have a long history of interactions. The nomadic Mongols invaded China many times, attracted to the relative wealth of the more settled Chinese. In fact, the Mongols even ruled China from 1279 to 1368, setting up the Yuan dynasty with its capital at Tatu, which is present-day Beijing. The Yuan dynasty was known for its religious toleration, especially of Muslims, Daoists, and Buddhists. During Mongol rule, the country prospered because the Mongols encouraged foreign and domestic trade. Eventually, the Han Chinese became dissatisfied with Mongol rule and threw them out. Since then, the Han have dominated their Mongol neighbors. Now the Peoples Republic of China rules Inner Mongolia.

A Recent Novel. By coincidence, this spring I read a novel about the Han and the Mongolians in Inner Mongolia. Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong tells the tale of Chen Zhen, a Chinese Han who travels there in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution and falls in love with the traditional Mongol way of life. He and two other Han young people work and live in a community that raises cattle, sheep, and horses on the steppe. While there, Chen learns from a local wise man of Mongolian lore and spritual life and the important place that wolves play in both.

First, he learns that wolves are important because they cull the number of gazelles on the grasslands. If the gazelles were allowed to multiply unchecked by the wolves, then the fragile grasslands would be destroyed and the Mongolian pastoralism would be threatened.

Next, after some wolves have killed a herd of horses, Chen hears arguments from the wise man that the Communist authorities should not go after the wolves with rifles and kill them. Such an action would upset the balance of nature, of which the wolves are a part. Chen tags along on one of the operations to kill a pack of wolves and in the process concludes that the wolves are just as smart as people.

Chen and a friend devise a plan to go into a wolf den and capture some wolf puppies. The adventure results in the capture of a puppy that Chen then keeps at his camp, first on a chain and later in a cage. He learns a lot about wolves from this experience, including the fact that the puppy remains wild, never giving up its wolfish traits.

The book goes on and on with many adventures, much knowledge of wolves being conveyed, and constant carping about the superiority of the Mongolian way of life, which is being threatened by Han development of Inner Mongolia. The book is fascinating, but it could have been cut by 100 pages without harming the story.

The Author. I was surprised to read that Wolf Totem has become a best-seller in China. When the book was published in 2004, the reading public did not know that Jiang Rong is a pseudonym and that the author's real name is Lu Jiamin.  A former Red Guard, Lu Jiamin went to Inner Mongolia in the 1960s to be re-educated. He remained there for 11 years but eventually became a professor in Beijing. He was detained for more than a year for participating in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

A Movie? I read in the press that some people in China were planning to make a feature film based on the novel Wolf Totem, but those plans had to be delayed or dropped because of opposition from Chinese authorities. This reaction shows the controversial nature of the book. Now with protests by Mongolians making international news, I would think that it is even less probable that the movie will be made.