Stark Chan: An educated youth in Beijing responded to the national call and jumped the queue in Inner Mongolia grassland. As a Han nationality, I was taught from an early age not to like wolves, but to fear and hate them. After arriving in Inner Mongolia, he became fascinated with wolves and the spirit of wolf totem.
Yang Ke: Yang is Stark Chan's best brother. He cut in line and settled down with Stark Chan. Their personalities are completely different, but they can be happy and share weal and woe.
Bilig: Old Bilig is the first teacher in Stark Chan. To some extent, he is actually a "father". Biliger teaches Stark Chan grassland culture and wolf totem culture, including how wolves hunt. Bilig taught Stark Chan everything about wolves.
Bao Shungui: Bao Shungui and Stark Chan have many different views. They also have different attitudes towards nature and wolves.
Theme of Wolf Totem
Wolf Totem is a novel with wolves as the narrative subject, which tells the story of an educated youth living with coyotes and herders when he jumped the queue in Inner Mongolia grassland in the 1960s and 1970s.
Humans have lost not only grasslands, but also wolves. What they really lost was the values of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. What is lost is the early totem of the Chinese nation: the spirit of freedom, independence, tenacity and courage, the character, will and dignity of never giving in and never surrendering.
An Overview of the Story of Wolf Totem
The background of the story took place in the late 1960s, the last piece of primitive grassland near the border of Chinese mainland and Inner Mongolia. Mongolian herders here still retain the ecological characteristics of nomadic people. They graze cattle and sheep freely and romantically on the grassland, and maintain the ecological balance of the grassland together with powerful herds of prairie wolves. They hate wolves ―― wolves are enemies who invade their homes; At the same time, they are also in awe of wolves-prairie wolves help Mongolian herders kill herbivores that cannot be carried too much on the grassland: antelopes, rabbits and prairie rats of all sizes. Wolf is the primitive totem of Mongols. The wolf's ferocity, cruelty, wisdom and team spirit, as well as its military talent and organizational division of labor, were once the natural instructors and evolutionary engines of the Mongolian army in Eurasia in the13rd century.
It is the history and mystery of the Mongolian nation, as well as the vastness and romance of the grassland that makes the protagonist of this book, a young Beijinger named Stark Chan, walk into the grassland. Soon, Stark Chan discovered that grasslands are not all romantic and free. Herdsmen have to fight wolves to protect their property. He witnessed Mongolian women and children fighting unarmed with wolves that attacked sheep-wolves as big as leopards. I have also strayed into wolves, and I have seen with my own eyes how wolves, under the command of the first wolf, dispatched troops to kill hundreds of antelopes. However, people took away the food stored by wolves. In order to avenge people's greed, the wolf used the cover of winter snowstorm and summer mosquito disaster to launch two cruel and heroic battles and attack horses on a large scale. So people were angered again. Cadres from farming ethnic groups, despite the opposition of Mongolian herders, started a large-scale wolf hunting battle. Stark Chan was shocked by the dignity and sacrifice of the wolf before he died. Stark Chan and his friends personally dug up a litter of puppies and raised one of them. He wants to explore the wolf's habits and philosophy through the growth of a little wolf. Through a series of intoxicating and interesting stories, Stark Chan found that the wolf is the only mysterious animal that cannot be tamed. For example, when facing food for the first time or facing a lot of food, a running circle will be held, similar to the gratitude ceremony or sacrifice of modern religion; For example, once a wolf leaves the earth, he will tremble and be weak, just like Aetna in Greek mythology. Furthermore, Stark Chan found that Mongolians not only regarded wolves as the object of totem worship of their own nation, but also put their bodies in the haunts of wolves for "celestial burial" after their death. Mongolian herders believe that wolves will take their souls to Tengger (Mongolian: heaven). Wolves are the enemies that Mongols fear, and they are also their friends for life and even the afterlife. It was the Mongols who conquered almost half the world with the spirit of wolves and opened up the commercial, trade and cultural exchanges between the East and the West.
Stark Chan and his young friend from Beijing became one with the herdsmen because of the wolf. But they can't stop the destruction of grassland ecology by farming culture and wrong policies during the Cultural Revolution. They first used modern weapons to kill wolves and drove the only remaining wolves out of the border. In addition, a large area of grassland has been reclaimed. A few years later, the grassland was infested with rodents and a large area of grassland was desertified. At the end of the work, that is, at the end of the novel, sandstorms from Mongolian grasslands have ravaged Beijing, and floating dust even drifted across the sea and wandered in the skies of Japan and South Korea. ...
Humans have lost not only grasslands, but also wolves. What they really lost was the values of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. What is lost is the early totem of the Chinese nation: the spirit of freedom, independence, tenacity and courage, the character, will and dignity of never giving in and never surrendering. This is the theme of Wolf Totem and the writer's sad call.
Experience of Wolf Totem
Wolf Totem is a novel with a wolf as its narrative theme. The wolf in Wolf Totem impacts our vision with a brand-new image that subverts tradition: it is tenacious, intelligent and warm, and despairs of freedom and dignity. Wolf Totem vividly reveals the internal relations of everything in grassland ecology, especially the great contribution of wolves to the whole grassland and ecology. The strong shock brought to readers by Wolf Totem lies in its cultural value and academic value. In all wolf stories or stories related to wolves, the author always compares the advantages and disadvantages of grassland civilization and farming civilization. The author combs the history of Chinese civilization for thousands of years from a brand-new historical perspective, taking "Wolf Totem" as the spiritual clue, and points out that the "Dragon Totem" believed by the Chinese nation probably originated from the "Wolf Totem" of nomadic people, and holds that it is precisely because of the fierce and enterprising spirit of nomadic people in history that Chinese civilization has been developed without interruption.
Wolf totem became a symbolic cultural phenomenon in the early 20th century, which triggered theoretical thinking on the relationship between communication and China's national character transformation. From the perspective of communication, psychology and literature research, this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework of the relationship between communication and personality, behavior and even national destiny, and makes a comprehensive analysis of its text by using the research method of text analysis. It is found that Wolf Totem explains the internal logic of the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties with two groups of opposing national personality divisions, such as "wolf nature" and "sheep nature", which contains certain rationality and profundity, but there are also problems such as simplification. After all, the interaction and presentation process between communication and national character has historical complexity. The transformation of China's national character can absorb the positive factors of "wolf nature". In addition to strengthening the character of courage, enterprising, adventure and cooperation, we should continue to carry forward the excellent personality traits of the Chinese nation and actively learn and absorb the excellent personality qualities of other nations. What China really needs must not be despised by the world, nor must it be feared by the world, but a national character that makes itself dignified and respected by the world. Only in this way can China embark on a sustained and long-term road of peaceful rise.