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

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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.