Preaching sidetracks story of China’s last herders

Wolf Totem

A Novel

Jiang Rong, translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt

The Penguin Press: 528 pp., $26.95

--

DURING the first chaotic days of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, Chinese students were sent to the hinterlands as part of a campaign to rid the nation of old, backward ways, or the “Four Olds,” as they were called -- old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits.

In the novel “Wolf Totem” we find two more “olds” added to that gang of four: Mongolian herders and Mongolian wolves.

The book chronicles a few years in the life of young Beijing university student Chen Zhen, part of a group sent to work on a commune on the outer edge of Inner Mongolia. In the idyllic desolation of the grasslands of the Olonbulag, the young man works and lives with Mongolian herders, the last of a dying breed. It is here that Chen is first introduced to the Mongolian wolf as well as the forces out to exterminate it. As the story goes on, Chen becomes increasingly enchanted by the wolf and its relation to the herdsmen, enough so that he snatches a wolf cub to raise on his own.

Largely based on the real experiences of the author (who uses the pen name Jiang Rong and who only recently revealed himself to be former political prisoner Lu Jiamin) as a young man, “Wolf Totem” became a literary sensation in China in 2004 and won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007.

Popularity, however, does not ensure quality. A novel that was reportedly contemplated for nearly 30 years and took six years to write has presumably been well thought out and, one hopes, carefully executed. Perhaps the problem is that it was mulled too much.

From the start we find a Communist China having just bungled its way out of the Great Leap Forward and stumbling into the era of re-revolutionary Red Guards. Eager to extend its influence into the ethnically non-Chinese autonomous regions, the government also intends to put its agricultural stamp on the land. Man is the highest on the food chain, and being on top means eradicating challengers to its position.

For the Communist cadres and the migrant Chinese they bring with them, first and foremost this means getting rid of the wolf.

What a rich stew of themes to work with: revolution; ecological destruction; man versus nature; the clash of cultures, traditions and lifestyles. Unfortunately, the author deviates from the vivid material that is in front of him and wanders into the realm of didactic philosophizing. Had Jiang avoided his philosophical musings and ramblings about “the Chinese soul” and concentrated more on the soul of his story, it could have been a spectacular novel. Instead it fails to rise above ordinary and at times ventures into the realm of batty.

There is an odd calculus at work throughout this much-heralded book. It basically goes like this: Han Chinese ethnicity, bad. Mongolians, good. Being the sedentary, agrarian people that they are, the Chinese naturally hate wolves. The nomadic, spiritual Mongolians revere them. Why do the Chinese hate wolves? The Chinese are like sheep -- weak, complacent, docile and easily led -- and sheep hate wolves, that’s why. Mongolians are not like sheep. They are brave, fearless, wise warriors; you can’t fence them in. Why are the Mongolians like this? They have a wolf as their totem, of course. How else could Genghis Khan have conquered most of the then-known world? The Chinese, the poor saps, have a dragon as their symbol.

These are some of the many ideas the reader is fed in “Wolf Totem.” It’s hard to go seven pages without coming across the circular whirl of Jiang’s authorial breath wafting up. It is a novel that is as bleak in its depictions as in what it proposes: The conclusion to be drawn is that the Chinese need to adopt the wolf as their totem because they have been weakened by their sheep-like agrarian existence. Or at least that is what is constantly presented through Chen Zhen’s actions, thoughts and dialogue.

More disturbing is how wolves are portrayed by Jiang: Much of the time they are described as soldiers in battle or part of guerrilla units, compared with everything from “samurai Fascists” (and the gratuitous anti-Japanese slap that phrase entails), to Genghis Khan, to the Huns and Anglo-Saxon tribes, all of whom had wolves as their totem when berserking across the land. Add in the overwrought descriptions of both how wolves kill and are killed, and you have a macho, militaristic bloodbath of a book.

Chen isn’t the only character that is a conduit for his master’s musings. Bilgee, the Mongolian herdsman who teaches Chen the ways of the wolf, is always the far-seeing elder. Anything that comes from his mouth is wise. Director Bao, the top-ranking Communist in the area, is the epitome of everything coarse and stunted in “the Chinese soul.” Everything he says is ignorance.

What could have been one of the strongest aspects of this novel -- the ecological subtext -- also fails. Jiang’s descriptions about how the wolves are essential -- eating the gazelle, marmots, mice and other animals that without a predator would destroy the ecology of the grassland -- could have been more powerful had they and the rest of the book been less preachy. The only redeeming quality of the novel is that it gives a vivid snapshot of the culture, spirituality, ethics and lifestyle of some of the last nomadic herders in Inner Mongolia. Had it only stayed there awhile.

--

Michael Standaert, author of the novel “The Adventures of the Pisco Kid,” lives in Beijing.