Wolf Totem

by Jiang Rong

Book Overview

An epic Chinese tale in the vein of The Last Emperor, Wolf Totem depicts the dying culture of the Mongols-the ancestors of the Mongol hordes who at one time terrorized the world-and the parallel extinction of the animal they believe to be sacred: the fierce and otherworldly Mongolian wolf Published under a pen name, Wolf Totem was a phenomenon in China, breaking all sales records there and earning the distinction of being the second most read book...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594201560
• ISBN13: 9781594201561
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Length: 527 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Unique and lyrical

The first-person novel is built on the author's own experience during the Cultural Revolution in China. It's an exceptional read for the story line alone - a young Han Chinese man capturing and raising a Mongolian wolf and through it coming to understand and love the people of inner Mongolia. His view may be romanticized, but it is so well-written that even in translation its unique Chinese lyricism is impressive. Moments of drama and humor intertwine with symbolism of the wolf to tell not just the protagonist's story, but that of the difficult but appealing life of the people he comes to understand and love. The underlying message about the changes in the region and their impact on the environment and a way of life are strongly portrayed. To achieve that, the author has created some implausible dialogues that are a little heavy-handed, yet it remains a beautiful book!

one of the best books I've ever read

First of all, let me be honest that I read the original Chinese version. It was one of the best books I have ever read in my life, exciting and conflicting, and inspring. How is it exciting?-- the stories of wolves and their interactions with humans, particularly the minorities in the northern part of China. The people in that area believed (and probably is the truth, i'm not sure about that part) their very ancestor was abandoned in the wild and was miraculously saved by a mother wolf who fed the human infant with her [...]. Therefore, they respect wolf as the life saver of all of them. They also view wolves as messengers from their God. After someone dies, they leave the body in the wild where wolves constantly come by. They want the wolves to eat the body and carry the dead person's soul to their God. They not only respect wolf, but almost treat it as a superior deity. They worship wolf. However, they couldn't resist the reality that wolves are not friendly to human. And here's where the conflicts kick in. They have to respect wolf due to their religious view, and at the same time they have to fight wolves to protect themselves and their farm animals. The conflict between emotion and reality makes this book more than interesting. The inspiration: this book is more than the breathtaking battles between human and wolf. The author analyzes deeply into Chinese history, civilization, and culture using the characteristics of wolf. At the end of the book, the author concludes that the reason China has been a weak player in the world stage in the past few centuries is because long years of peaceful farming culture has turned the country into a gentle sheep, whose people don't even have the courage to stand up to protect themselves when being attacked. It offers a very unique and insiprational view of Chinese civilization.

wolf totem : a review

Author Jiang Rong has written a best selling (in China) novel which in essence makes a negative comparison between the timid and authoritarian-numbed culture of China with the rugged, adventurous, and tough culture of the Mongolia grasslands. The story is rich in excitement and detail about life in this challenging Mongolian setting. The independent and cunningly intelligent wolf becomes the symbol of all that is to be admired about this vibrant, but dying culture. The question is raised as to why the Chinese are so complacent when another option so clearly displayed by the independent spirit of the Mongolian grasslands is readily available? Still, there is a paradox in this story in that the culture that is showing the world the most energy, innovation, and spectacular growth is the one being found lacking. One can understand that some may lament China's lack of a spiritual engine since the demise of Marxism-Leninism, and its failure yet to find another ism to take its place. With the progress that has been made, at least the Chinese can consider the future and human needs without suffering the numbing poverty and chaos of previous years and decades. Given the tremendous Chinese response to this novel, however, perhaps we are failing to recognize the depth of the society's need for something more personally fulfilling than just success and wealth. Is there really such a serious lack of self-confidence among the Chinese, even in the face of so much recognition and progress? The novel raised a lot of questions for me, which is a sign of its worth.

Powerful, exciting story about the consequenses of taming nature

This is a wonderful book, all the more enjoyable because it comes from a culture that does not produce many books that are successful (or even available) in the West. This books enormous success in China strikes me as evidence that cultures all over the world are coming to understand the same thing; the whole human race needs to re-think our relationship with nature. There is much that our world can teach us, if we are ready to learn. This book is not angry; it is not preachy; but it is powerful. Highly recommended.

Powerful Naturalism and an Extraordinary View into China's National Psyche

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