Hello everyone, a propos Bill's suggestion that someone writes a book about the art of the Wolf Warriors...

I recently finished the excellent 'Wolf Totem' by Jiang Rong, and I'll just make some comments about what I think I discovered in it about the significance of the wolf in Chinese culture.

Forgive me if too random and/or familiar to you all.

The point is that there's a recurring distinction in the book between the 'sheep'-like nature of the Han and the 'wolf'-like nature of the Mongols.

In other words, Han China's 'wolf-like' nature is not innate but must be adopted.

What the Han gain in adopting these characteristics is what the wolves themselves possess: freedom, self-determination, a sense of dignity, and a noble role in maintaining an ecosystem. In the book, this latter point is crucial: wolves control the grassland's horse population, and by doing so protect the grassland which sustains cows, sheep and the whole of life.

On a couple of occasions, the main protagonist Chen Zhen refers to Lu Xun's characterisation of the Chinese as 'domesticated', or sheep-like.

I think it's interesting that the wolf, which has taken on this quality of being a quintessential image of Chinese assertiveness, has in a sense been 'imported'.

If anyone can point me to anything that's been written about this I'd be very grateful!