June 10, 2008: Jiang Rong on the Rapacity of Man and Wolves - 0 Comments

The author of Wolf Totem writes with this extemely odd voice, as if all characters from the book are reading from the same set of stern lecture notes:

"At that moment he sensed how rapacious and vain humans can be. There would have been nothing wrong with picking the biggest and strongest of the seven cubs. So why had they brought the entire litter home? He should never have taken Dorji and Gao Jianzhong along. But would he have only brought one cub back with him if they hadn't been there? Probably not. Bringing back the whole liter represented conquest, courage, reward, and glory; it won him the respect of others. Compared to that, those seven lives were like grains of sand."

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"Chen too felt his emotions rise. 'Seeing those pelts up there reminds me of the Turkish flags gilded with wolf heads that ancient horsemen carried into battle, galloping across the grassland, wolf blood coursing through their veins, filled with the courage, ferocity, and wisdom they'd learned from those very wolves, to become conquerors of the world.'
'You know,' Zhang said, 'I now share your view that the wolf is a very complex subject, one that touches on many important issues.'"

- Jian Rong, Wolf Totem, 2004