Author Lu Jiamin, writing under the pen-name Jiang Rong, has had unprecedented success in China with his novel Wolf Totem. (Penguin Group Canada)
At first glance, the novel Wolf Totem seems to be a quaint — if violent — story about life among wolves on the Mongolian grasslands. Written by academic and former political prisoner Lu Jiamin under the pen-name Jiang Rong, the tale follows Chen Zhen, a Beijing student in the 1960s who obeys Chairman Mao’s urging to go “up to the mountains and down to the countryside.” Chen elects to live on the Mongolian grasslands with nomadic herders. Once there, he becomes fascinated with the nomads’ way of life, as well as with the free-roaming grassland wolf — the “totem,” or highest point of Mongolian herder society.
Wolf Totem expresses a deep concern for the Mongolian grasslands and the protection of its nomadic people against the encroaching Han Chinese. Given its critique of Chinese society during the Cultural Revolution, it’s surprising that Wolf Totem has not only escaped government censorship, but sold two million legitimate copies — and up to six million more on the black market — in China. In fact, Wolf Totem has become the country’s second most-read book, behind only the ubiquitous Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (a.k.a. “The Little Red Book”).
Wolf Totem’s success is even more unexpected coming from an author who once told the New York Times, “China opposes freedom more than anything else.” The recipient of the first annual Man Asian Prize for Literature in 2007, the book has garnered significant global attention prior to its publication in English. Penguin U.S. paid $100,000 US for translation rights to the book, and released its edition April 12.
Wolf Totem serves as a timely allegory for the dangers of disregarding historical precedent and natural equilibrium. Among the book’s western fans is former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, chair of the judges’ panel for the Man Asian Prize.
The wolves are free, but also cruel, often attacking and slaughtering the Mongol horses that are crucial to the herders’ economic well-being. Described in the novel as “sinister” and “savage,” wolves are the horses’ natural enemies, picking off weak members of the herd. But rather than a curse, the carnage is a gift to the herders. “Mongol horses rank number one in strength, stamina, digestion, immune system, and the ability to withstand cold and heat,” Jiang writes. “All these qualities were forcefully developed by the wolves’ speed and fangs.”
Grazing horses destroy the grassland with their ravenous appetites, their manure and hoofs, while wolves regulate through the destruction they wreak; this is the persistent logic of Wolf Totem. Fitness, hardship and economy ensure the well-being of people and animals. Wolves, through the sacrifices they exact from the herders, preserve the tribe’s fitness and allow the nomads to thrive in their harsh environment.
Howard Goldblatt, Wolf Totem’s English translator, admits he was “surprised by the virtually unprecedented success of a novel about Mongolian wolves.” He suggests that “the ‘freedom’ issue — hardly any beasts, including humans, roam as freely as wolves — and the [book’s] alarming ecology forecast have struck a resonant chord among readers.”
(Penguin Group Canada)
Although captivating to Chen, the wolves are a source of tension between the Mongolian nomads and the arriving Han Chinese revolutionaries. “Fear and hatred of wolves is in our bones,” explains another character in the book, a fellow Beijing student named Yang. “I’d be surprised if [the Han Chinese] didn’t skin every last wolf on the grassland.” Bao Shungui, the head of the local communist leadership party, is a significant threat to the wolves and the Mongols who revere them. Railing against the “wolf scourge” responsible for pasture deaths, Bao’s goal is to “keep killing wolves until there are none left.” He is never able to comprehend the fine balance that the predators defend. The Mongols’ struggle to convince the Chinese newcomers of the need for grassland wolves draws a powerful parallel with contemporary battles over environmental protection and abuse.
“Environmental concerns have played a major role in the novel’s success,” notes Goldblatt, a U.S. professor and leading translator of Chinese literature, in an e-mail interview. “As its citizenry mobilizes to clean up China’s air, water and more, the threat from the Gobi [Desert] is a major concern to people, even those who do not appreciate the wolf as much as the author does.” In this respect, Wolf Totem is not simply an allegory, but also a literal depiction of the effects of climate change on the region. Today, because of grassland depletion, Mongolia is victimized by increasingly harsh winters and hot, arid summers. And with the escalating environmental damage of the grasslands comes poverty and diminishing resources.
In their predation, wolves protect the “big life” — namely, the grassland — from the “little lives” — the herds and the humans it nurtures. “Without the ‘big life,’” Wolf Totem continually reminds us, “the ‘little lives’ are doomed.” The disrespect for undeveloped land threatens the health of indigenous communities as much, if not more, than that of the land itself.
The anxiety of Chen, the Han Chinese narrator extolling the virtues of a culture threatened by his own race, will be familiar to North American readers.
In a recent phone interview from Toronto, Adrienne Clarkson said Wolf Totem speaks to more than just Chinese readers: “In this novel, something should be echoing for us as Canadians.” She compares Wolf Totem’s depiction of the herders’ conflict with agrarian settlers to Canadian author Sharon Butala’s The Perfection of the Morning.
“[Butala] talks about the difference between the ranchers and the farmers,” she points out. “That conflict goes way, way back. What we have [in Canada] is a nomadic tradition, particularly with our Inuit, and we also have a settler mentality. What we’re shown is that the nomadic way of life has its own reasons for being and is close to the Earth.”
Wolf Totem’s author went to Mongolia under the same pretext as his character and spent 10 years living among the nomadic herders there. The book is clearly a work of advocacy on behalf of a threatened culture. As Bilgee, the tribe’s “alpha wolf,” tells Chen, “If you could turn into a Mongol and write books for us, that would be wonderful.”
It’s not clear why Lu Jaimin’s novel has escaped persecution in China, when so many of his fellow writers have been jailed for allegedly subversive works —according to PEN Canada, there are at least 38 Chinese authors and journalists currently known to be in prison. However, it could be said that the book’s hostility toward Chinese culture is incidental to the novel’s larger goal of progress and respect.
“[Lu Jiamin] is anti-Confucian,” says Goldblatt. “[He hopes] that the Chinese will succumb less to the constraints of traditional behaviour, seek greater freedoms, become more cohesive and, if you will, ‘wolfish.’”
Wolf Totem’s English translation is in stores now.
Nicole Pasulka is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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