Wolf Totem is a book published by Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House in 2004 and written by Jiang Rong. It mainly tells the story of a zhiqing who lived with steppe wolves and nomads when he joined the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in the 1960s and 1970s.
It was first drafted in Beijing in 1997, finalized in Beijing at the end of 2003, and published in April 2004. After its publication in China, the book was translated into 30 languages and distributed in 110 countries and regions around the world.
As of April 2014, it has been reprinted more than 150 times in Chinese mainland, with nearly 5 million genuine copies, ranking in the top ten of the best-seller list of literary books for six consecutive years, and winning dozens of awards. There are thousands of research papers and treatises on "Wolf Totem" in newspapers and periodicals at home and abroad and online new media.
Positive reviews
Meng Fanhua: The Wolf Totem is a splendid and bizarre presence in the overall pattern of contemporary Chinese literature: if it is read as a novel, it is full of history and legend; if it is read as a work of cultural anthropology, it is full of fiction and imagination. The author combines his knowledge and literary abilities wonderfully, and this is the uniqueness of the work. Its specific description and anthropological knowledge interpenetrate so unexpectedly and inconceivably. Therefore, this is a reasonable and intertwined book that penetrates the back of the paper. It is the wolf of reality, but also the wolf of history. Therefore, it is a wolf's hymn and a wolf's elegy.
Zhang Kangkang: This book is a feast of rich literary details. The book is flipped through and is full of unforgettable literary details. Its "texture" is unique, real, dense, vivid and accurate, which is breathtaking. The original grassland style of the millennium, the storm snow white disaster, the change of the grassland in the four seasons, the living habits of mongolian herders, the cruelty and warmth of the wolves, the innocence and wisdom of the little wolves; the life forms and interrelationships of steppe horses, shepherd dogs, sheep, busy cattle, marmots, hares, steppe rats, swans, eagles... Countless wonderful stories have been formed independently and closely related, outlining a real picture of grassland life, and realistically and artistically reproducing the cruelty and beauty of the original nomadic grassland.
Di Na: The article "Wolf Totem" is large, the text is simple and approachable, and the story is extremely readable. And the book "Wolf Totem" - wolf, the temptation, the wolf, the shrewdness; the wolf, the courage, etc., are also vividly expressed, which is a rare best-selling masterpiece! [10]
Zhou Tao: This is a big book about the re-understanding of the nomadic philosophy of survival caused by wolves. This proposition has existed for thousands of years, but the Han people with Confucian culture have never dared to face it squarely, because it is close to the weakness of the deep national character of Confucian culture. [11]
Negative reviews
Zhiqing, who was in the same brigade production class as Jiang Rong, the author of "Wolf Totem", became emotional after watching an interview with Jiang Rong on April 3 of Southern Weekend, and claimed that the whole book of "Wolf Totem" was fabricated indiscriminately, distorted the nature of "wolf", and seriously misled young readers. At the same time, another part of the critics expressed dissatisfaction with the repeated innuendo in "Wolf Totem" that "the theory of the superiority and inferiority of nomadic and agrarian peoples", while the author proposed that Western civilization was strong and strong because it had the same "wolf nature" as nomadic peoples, which made some scholars feel strange.
Gu Bin, a German sinologist, said: "'Wolf Totem' is fascist for us Germans, and this book has humiliated China. ” [12]
China Writers Network: "Wolf Totem" distorts facts and subverts common sense in a surprisingly challenging gesture. The author espouses a naïve biological determinism, paranoid that wolves play a decisive role in the progress of human civilization. Because of the lack of respect for common sense, it is difficult for the author to maintain the logical consistency and relevance of the subject and the situation in the process of unfolding the narrative. His judgments and opinions often fight with the plot within the text. Not only that, in fact, many times the author's own discussion is also contradicting each other and dismantling itself. In short, if the subjectivity of paranoia led to the confusion of the themes and values of Wolf Totem, then the subversion of common sense turned the writing and publication of the novel into a failed discursive event with dubious values and poor artistry.
Liu Xiaomeng said: "Literary works allow subjective and creative fiction, but they cannot violate the minimum historical records and the actual life of the pastoral area. In the novel, it is mentioned that the herder's heavenly burial is to allow the wolf to eat the corpse to complete the process of ascension, in fact, the herdsman's ideal heavenly burial is to peck the corpse by the eagle, followed by the beast to eat, the most taboo is to keep the corpse. In Inner Mongolian folklore, the status of eagles is far higher than that of wolves, because eagles do not cause harm to the lives of herders, on the contrary, I have been in inner Mongolia for five years, and I have never heard a good word from herders about wolves. As soon as the wolf has the opportunity to get close to the flock, even if it has eaten enough, it will bite off the throats of all the sheep to death. The nature of the wolf, in my opinion, is to be ferocious, violent, and greedy. ”
Old ghost: "Not only me, but all the old intellectuals and young people around me who have been to the pastoral areas of Inner Mongolia can't accept this book." Because it fictionalizes a fact, it fictionalizes a culture. The Mongolian herders not only did not use the wolf as a totem, but also killed the wolf.
Celebrity reviews
After reading "Wolf Totem", I feel that many of the incredible tactics of wolves are worth learning. First: do not fight unprepared battles, step on points, ambush, attack, encircle, block, well-organized, very methodical. Second: the best time to attack, save strength, paralyze the other party, and when it is the most difficult to run, suddenly attack, killing the other party. Third: the most commendable thing is the team spirit in the battle, coordinated combat, and even at the cost of crushing his bones and dying in the line of duty for victory. In business battles, this kind of opponent is the most feared and the most lethal.
——Zhang Ruimin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Haier Group
This is, of course, a strange book, a great book about a new understanding of the nomadic philosophy of survival arising from wolves. It is close to the weakness of the national character of Confucian culture. The confluence of 500,000 words and 500,000 wolves shows the experience, wisdom and courage of writers, and also shows our great spirit of facing up to our own weaknesses.
——Writer and critic Zhou Tao
The Wolves thanked The Wolf Totem. It made me read: deep, bold, melancholy and long Mongolian long tune and steppe wolf grumbling, loneliness, stubbornly crying in the sky, are the expression of the tragic warrior facing the eternal life of the heavens; it is the most beautiful emotion, the most weak heart, the most moving love song dedicated to the great mother in "Heaven"...
--Mongol singer Tengger
I feel that the wolf has a mission, not to be afraid of sacrifice and not to be afraid of hardship