Status Updates From Wolf Totem: A Novel

Sigh
😔
So many parallels in the midst of differences with what happened in the Great Plains and other parts of Turtle Island

Thinking about Little Wolf, when you get a wolf by the chain and file down his fangs, you can’t let him go, but you cannot keep him. You cannot domesticate or even tame - you must learn to live with or you will lose all

“Mice are kings in a wolfless grassland”

And the children of modernity rise up to curse the generations who came before, who consumed and destroyed for greed and ease, leaving nothing of heritage, of cooperation, of interchange with Gaia’s many children behind, reaching back to further gone generations in hopes of wisdom and renewal for a new future

Some of what Bilgee teaches Chen reminds me of the kind of balance + careful taking + leaving Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about to respect the environment + the ecosystem + different parts of it so you’re a part of it too + not a parasite. And then in come ppl who have no understanding nor respect for anything but big numbers to increase their own status + they quickly destroy that balance + produce only desert

By turns frustrating + wonderful + heartbreaking + judgmental
Wolf cub dug his own little den into the ground to get down to the cooler sandy levels w/sides shading o’er to escape the summer grassland heat+sun; Chen Zhen’s worrying heart is eased at cub’s ability to problem solve sth he himself hadn’t yet figured out. Yang Ke unsuccessfully tries to save 2 unhatched cygnets fr laborers who killed father swan

Back to it!

I recog the convos abt culture + comparisons btwn, being incomers
Hoping for the wolf cub but apprehensive abt his end. I don’t know how they cld hold onto him once he reaches adulthd + I don’t think they cld get away w/releasing him w/o getting into major trouble w/authorities
Not surprised Dorji’s cub ended the way it did when D seemd to go into it w/even less thot - unsup’d play w/child >injury >kill pup

18 + 19 might be my 2 favorite chapters
Tho they’re still peppered w/the overseer’s determination not to listen to any pleas, cultural or environmental, they also hold the hearts of 2 students + connection w/wild creatures, Chen + his wolf cub, independent + wild but still connected, Yang, the swans + the overwhelming beauty of an untouched valley. Sadness; swans in their beauty always seem to come with sadness

Farming vs herding vs wild life
There are a lot of discussions of the best way to administrate the land and the ppl, and defending old practices for the sake of the ecosystemand the ecosystem for the sake of the herds and for the future

Relief and sadness
So they let the wolf go…after they had maimed it w/a rifle shot. Respect remembered too late…or one kind of too late

I’m trying to trust the author as the one w/on the ground experience, but the descriptions of the behavior of a wolf cub that young don’t match anything I’ve seen elsewhere - it doesn’t make sense to me
In another direction, I find it interesting that they kept the new lambs separate from the ewes except for 2 feeding times, + had to actively pair them up for feeding instd of leaving them w/the grazing ewes

I’ve never felt so confused + torn- caught up in the thrill of a hunt w/brilliantly cunning strategy + horrified at the killing of the wolves. Why must we be so opposed? How can they so respect the wolves even tying their own soul + identity to them + yet so glory in killing them?
Then that bit at the end abt dogs whom nomadic Mongols love + farmer Han despise, but I can’t imagine a farm in the US w/o farm dogs

“Knowing he was about to participate in a contest acted out on the primitive grassland between a pair of wolf kings, Chen was exhilarated.”
Thinking of humans as wolves themselves (papa Bilgee the 2nd wolf king) really flips the narrative in my mind. You can say all you want that humans are literally animals but I find it difficult to get past barrier in my mind that still classifies us as different, separate

Staking out wolf dens to try to get cubs and how dare the mother wolves fight or outsmart them…repeatedly. The cunning wolf.

Some really awful stories of terrible things they do to the wolves. A bit relieving that someone felt sad over a young wolf killed to take her pups

Still somehow find the voice/perspective… unpleasant. I don’t entirely understand this since he’s explicating many parts of the culture through daily life as we go along and since Chen is so interested in the wolves and understanding them more deeply

Wow. Sucks you in when focused on the Mongolian herders + the wolves. When it comes back to the narrator + worse the supervisor, the over simplistic attempts at explaining what the herders know far more of are aggravating and at times silly
I do wonder at how bloody the perspective in the wolves is. Even family devotion is turned onto blood-thirsty revenge. No sense of wolves in families except for counting numbers