Review: Wolf Totem (Jiang Rong)

The central story in the Chinese novel Wolf Totem is imminently readable and even educational (but don’t let that scare you away!).  Yes, parts of the book distract from the central story and key parts are underdeveloped.  Nonetheless, I would enthusiastically recommend this book on the strength of the story and its setting in a historic, cultural, and geographic context not readily available to Western readers.

Wolf Totem is the semi-autobiographical story of a Beijing student and budding intellectual, Chen Zhen, sent to Inner Mongolia to labor as a sheepherder during the Maoist cultural revolution of the 1960s. Chen and other Beijing students live in yurts and work with semi-nomadic herdsmen whose ancestors have tended livestock on the steppe for hundreds of generations. During his servitude, Chen embraces the Mongol culture and laments the Communist government’s efforts to transform the ecologically pristine steppe into agricultural regions more efficient at feeding China’s growing population.  Chen in particular idealizes the sustainable relationship the herdsmen have negotiated with their natural environment.  This includes a reverence toward wolves, which are at once the center of the Mongols' spiritual and cultural identity as well as their most feared and reviled enemies.  When the Communist government implements a brutally efficient wolf eradication policy, Chen sympathizes with Mongol elders who realize that the semi-nomadic culture of frontier is forever changing.

A frustration with the book is that most of the historical back story is unstated.  It is never explained why the main character, Chen, was displaced from his home in Beijing and sent to labor on the frontier.  The author, Jiang Rong (a pseudonym) wrote this book in 2004 and it was translated into English and published in the United States in 2008.  The book was originally written in Chinese and published in China, presumably for a Chinese audience.  Perhaps a certain level of obscurity was necessary to survive Chinese censors.  But you don’t need a background in modern Chinese political history to understand that the central story is, at minimum, an implicit criticism of Chinese policies on its Inner Mongolian frontier.  Still, by the end of the book we know far more of the life and history and personality of a wolf cub captured and raised (tragically) by Chen than we know of Chen himself.

The book’s use of the wolf/sheep metaphor throughout to represent the author's view of  the robust, nomadic Mongol herders versus domestic Chinese farmers is a bit clunky and at times the author comes across as overly didactic.  These are minor criticisms and may be the result of the translation from Chinese to English.

A final criticism: the author’s wolf reverence becomes almost fantastical and personification of wolves is rampant.  Disparate packs of wolves come together in master strategy session to plan and launch attacks on the Mongols’ war horses.  Gangs of grieving mothers losing cubs to wolf hunters plot and carry out revenge attacks.  Of course, Jack London (whose works are read by the fictitious Beijing students in the novel) engages in similar literary license in White Fang and Call of the Wild.  Still, I found this aspect distracting from the bigger story.  One unexpected and welcome part of the book was discovering similarities between settlement of the Mongolian frontier and the settlement of the American West, especially through the context of wolf eradication. 

Wolf Totem is unique, interesting, and thought provoking.  Perhaps best of all, tt has instilled an inchoate interest in a part of the world that I have had insufficient exposure.

RCM