Asian Trips - Wolf Totem: A Novel
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List Price: $26.95
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Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.1352
EAN: 9781594201561
ISBN: 1594201560
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: 2008-03-27
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The
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Editorial Reviews:
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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 after Mao's little red book. There has been much international excitement too-to date, rights have been sold in thirteen countries. Wolf Totem is set in 1960s China-the time of the Great Leap Forward, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution.
Searching for spirituality, Beijing intellectual Chen Zhen travels to the pristine grasslands of Inner Mongolia to live among the nomadic Mongols-a proud, brave, and ancient race of people who coexist in perfect harmony with their unspeakably beautiful but cruel natural surroundings. Their philosophy of maintaining a balance with nature is the ground stone of their religion, a kind of cult of the wolf.
The fierce wolves that haunt the steppes of the unforgiving grassland searching for food are locked with the nomads in a profoundly spiritual battle for survival-a life-and-death dance that has gone on between them for thousands of years. The Mongols believe that the wolf is a great and worthy foe that they are divinely instructed to contend with, but also to worship and to learn from. Chen's own encounters with the otherworldly wolves awake a latent primitive instinct in him, and his fascination with them blossoms into obsession, then reverence.
After many years, the peace is shattered with the arrival of Chen's kinfolk, Han Chinese, sent from the cities to bring modernity to the grasslands. They immediately launch a campaign to exterminate the wolves, sending the balance that has been maintained with religious dedication for thousands of years into a spiral leading to extinction-first the wolves, then the Mongol culture, finally the land. As a result of the eradication of the wolves, rats become a plague and wild sheep graze until the meadows turn to dust. Mongolian dust storms glide over Beijing, sometimes blocking out the moon.
Part period epic, part fable for modern days, Wolf Totem is a stinging social commentary on the dangers of China's overaccelerated economic growth as well as a fascinating immersion into the heart of Chinese culture.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Wolf Totem"
Comment: My husband & I both read it and found it simply wonderful. I fear I must lean on many trite words at this point: moving, beautifully written,touching,insightful, inspiring....You get the drift. It will make what Sarah Palin does, shooting the wolves, seem even more heinous. It is one of those books that when you finish is it, you know you've had a real memorable experience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Beautifully Written, Thought Provoking & Engaging Book
Comment: Few books come across ones horizon that capture ones imagination from the first few pages and maintain the reader's interest until the very end. WOLF TOTEM (LANG TUTENG) is definitely one such book. As my title for this review suggests, not only is this book beautifully written, it provokes the mind to think and contimplate some of its not so hidden messages.
This is a wonderfully written story about a part of China and a period in Chinese modern history that is not often told. When have we read a story of Mongolia that has not been dominated by war stories related to Genghis Khan? When have we read a novel written about the time of the Cultural Revolution that has not been about Red Guards, the Gang of Four, Mao's isolation, the persecution of intellectuals and the chaos of the time? These are just two reasons why I fully enjoyed Wolf Totem.
Throughout its pages, I could not help making the comparisons between the Mongolian plains people and other nomadic people desperately trying to hold on to a traditional way of life as globalization and modernization slowly compress them into forever altering their lifestyles. While true that this is primarily a story about 3 young Chinese students "sent down to the countryside" (as tragic as that may be), it is also a story that has a clear environmental and international message - something can be learned from others deemed "less fortunate", "less developed", "less educated", and "less modernized". Throughout this novel, predictions of the impact the "Hans" were to have on the grassland (the overall environment) as a result of their cultural bias towards wolves and all the implications that come with it comes to bear in the final pages of the novel.
Ironically, two of the students return to the Mongolian plains after twenty years of having returned to their "normal existence" only to realize that the Mongolian predictions had been correct. When was the last time that a novel of China during the Cultural Revolution by a Chinese seemingly "victimized" by the uproar of the time wrote an overall glowing novel of his experiences there? It seems that the author truly did "learn from the countryside". Not that it really made much of a difference in the end (as readers will note in the epilogue).
Wolf Totem is among a few books I have read in my lifetime in which I wanted it to never end yet I could not wait to get to the end. A delight to any fan of a great story told well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unique and lyrical
Comment: 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!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Reflections on Wolf Totem
Comment: A good novel requires good characters and good story. This novel has both of these. This is not the type of story I would normally be drawn to; however I was drawn into it once I started. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Then there are the historical and political elements of the story. Though I had some general knowledge about what happened in Mao's regime, this was fascinating, particularly knowing the author's past. I could really see what this meant to Mengda Shu and her friends who lived through this in China. Seeing this all through the eyes of Chen made history come alive. It also reminded me of some of the issues broiling up recently about Tibet.
The story is also one about the relationship between man and nature. Are we authorized to dominate nature or are we called to live in harmony with nature? Bilgee and his people live in tune with the rhythms and power of nature. They revere nature and are not separate from it. Though Chen is intrigued by that, he attempts to control nature in raising his cub. The Han government sees nature as something to conquer and is unwilling to comprehend the implications of their conquest.
After finishing the book and reflecting on it for our phone meeting, a deeper spiritual aspect of the book came to mind. This was influenced by my Zen Buddhist practice and study. It looks through the various characters at the different ways we can approach life. Bilgee and his people on one hand are cognizant of the interrelationship of all things, including themselves to nature. However they also seem attached to old ways, clinging and not accepting change, which is a constant. The Han government wipes out anything that gets in its way and thinks it can control life. Chen gets in trouble by being too intellectual and, in essence, steals the cub's life in his search for knowledge. He fails to listen to wisdom from Bilgee about not raising the cub and in the end kills the animal. Maybe the only ones accepting life as it is in each present moment are the wolves. They are not attached and are willing to move with change and do not attack except for their own survival.
I will have to review the book again and see if I can get more detail on these spiritual underpinnings.
Customer Rating:
Summary: one of the best books I've ever read
Comment: 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.
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