Wolf Totem

Author: Jiang Rong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: An epic work about wolves, a unique interpretation of Chinese history, and an original piece that will bring significant shock to the business world, cultural circles, and academia. Are we descendants of the dragon or the wolf? This is the only book in the world so far that depicts and studies the Mongolian wolf, a "legendary masterpiece." Reading this book will be an endless spiritual feast about the wolf totem for our generation. Because of its depth, because it is irreplaceable. Because the nomadic grasslands where the Mongol cavalry and Mongolian wolf packs roamed freely are disappearing, or have already vanished, all those legends and stories about wolves are fading from our memory, leaving us and future generations with only some moral curses and bitter insults in the form of words. If it weren't for this book, the wolf—especially the Mongolian wolf—this engine of ancient Chinese totem worship and natural evolution would be like some dark matter in the universe, distant from our Earth and humanity, drifting in an unknowable eternity, indifferent to our ignorance and folly. The book is a seamless flow of dozens of interconnected "wolf stories," with intense, thrilling, and mysterious. Readers can experience an intense sense of reading pleasure from every chapter and detail, making it hard to put down. Those-like Mongolian wolves leap out of the pages at any moment: the wolf's superior tactics in reconnaissance, deployment, ambush, and surprise attacks; its clever use of weather and terrain; its unwavering courage and perseverance; the familial love and bonds within the wolf pack; the relationship between wolves and everything on the grassland; the difficult growth process of the stubborn and adorable young wolf after losing its freedom—all of which remind us of humans, leading us to ponder the unresolved questions in human history: Why were the mere tens of thousands of Mongol cavalry able to sweep across Europe and Asia? What is the deeper reason behind the vast territory of the Chinese nation today? In history, was it the Chinese civilization that conquered the nomadic peoples, or did the nomadic peoples repeatedly "bleed" into the Han Chinese, allowing Chinese civilization to endure? Why do the horse-riding peoples of China, from ancient times to the present, do not worship the horse totem but instead follow the wolf totem? Is the reason why Chinese civilization has never been interrupted due to the existence of an uninterrupted wolf totem culture in China? Thus, we cannot help but reflect and imagine, cannot help but face our once glorious and once broken mountains, rivers, and history, and ask: We claim to be descendants of Yan and Huang, but do you know that the "dragon totem" could very well have evolved from the "wolf totem" of the nomadic peoples? Will the "dragon totem worship" of the Chinese nation finally be revealed? Are we descendants of the dragon or the wolf?