Wolf Totem

"It is. Or rather, Wolf Totem doesn’t actually cover the Great Leap Forward. It’s set in the period following the Great Leap Forward. But it is still Mao’s time. If you read Wolf Totem and another wonderful book – Julia Lovell’s The Great Wall: China Against the World – if you read those two together they provide an interesting illustration of what’s happened to the environment. Because that border – the border that has moved over history between the nomadic herders and the settled farmers – is also an environmental line. When the central state in China was weak, the barbarians, as the Chinese Han would call them, were able to reclaim their territories which went down to just north of Beijing, and it would sort of green-up again. But when the central state grew stronger and the Han moved north they essentially degraded the environment and created desert. So, for instance, when the Manchu held Manchuria and no Han were allowed to live there it was forested and fertile, but there is no forest left now. In 100 years they have deforested Manchuria. It’s interesting, isn’t it? It was a very controversial book in many ways. But Jiang Rong was saying things that, had a Mongolian said them, would have aroused nationalistic indignation, but which probably needed to be said. Wolf Totem contains certain things that have universal romantic appeal: wolves, tribesmen, and so on. But the message that central Chinese policies have been catastrophic for the people who were China’s neighbours – and who are now incorporated into China – very much needed to be said. And it was a way of criticising the party without it being about Han China. But it spoke for a lot of what had happened in Han China too. The problem is that they go on repeating this: they’re doing it now in Tibet and in Qinghai, all those western provinces which are now being subjected to mass Han migration and to intensive agriculture. They’re trying to monetise the nomadic herders – or rather, they did try to monetise them, now they’re trying to settle them into cities. It’s really a policy of misguided colonialism with catastrophic environmental outcomes. They’ve always believed that they knew best."

"This was a huge hit. I don’t think it’s a very good book, but it’s interesting. It’s about the relationship between Han Chinese and Mongols. It positions the Mongols as this kind of in-touch-with-nature, fierce, warrior people, like wolves, and the Han as these settled ‘sheeple.’ He’s very admiring of the Mongols but doesn’t let them speak for themselves. They’re only defined in opposition to what being Chinese is. It’s like in 20th century America, where you get books praising the Indians for being brave and noble and primitive, and having these wonderful values that American society has lost. There’s no space for the Mongols to be anything other than a monument to the past. It reduces them to a stick to hit the Chinese with for being too passive and bowing to authority. “The wild, barbarous, noble, primitive image is an appealing one. It touches some core, call-of-the-wild impulse we have.” That sort of romanticism is always popular. Look at The Last of the Mohicans, or way back to those Roman statues like The Dying Gaul . The wild, barbarous, noble, primitive image is an appealing one. It touches some core, call-of-the-wild impulse we have. A lot of Chinese are profoundly ambivalent of their own society. They look around and see people who are too meek. It also taps into this victim narrative in Chinese culture. It portrays the Chinese as being, historically, weak, passive victims of more powerful people. It ties into the belief that China has always been this peaceful country that other countries, because they’re too passive, have been able to prey upon. This isn’t true historically: the Chinese were an aggressive, expansionist power who tried to impose their authority all over the place. But it plays into this modern interpretation of what history was, how China suffered under the Western powers, and so on. There’s this weird mixture of self-loathing and self-promotion. Most Mongols despise Chinese — not being Chinese is one of the defining factors in Mongolian identity nowadays. I talked to one Mongol guy who had read it who said ‘Yeah, we are wolves and strong and the Chinese are weak and passive!’ Ironically, both sides like to play up this stereotype. The Mongol men love the idea that they’re this fierce, masculine, powerful people. Mongol women are a little more balanced. Also, to portray Mongols as having this intimate relationship with wolves is funny. In most of Mongolia wolves are treated as pests and Mongols hunt them in the back of 4x4s with rifles. No mystical stuff there."