A Smart Wolf Living with Well-Armed Enemies
Out of absolute boredom of staying at home and doing virtually nothing productive, I have been reading a Chinese book on the lives of Mongolian herders on the vast steppes of the Inner Mongolian Grasslands. Written as a personal narrative of a Han Chinese youngster escaping the violence of Cultural Revolution, it explores, from the perspective of the Han Chinese, the lifestyles, values, and beliefs of the "untamed" (i.e. not converted into permanent settled communities) Mongolians in an effort to understand the ethnic differences and the spectacular military history of Mongols and their ancestors. From the very beginning, the author establishes the bipolarity of "nomadic-herding civilization" (such as that of the Mongolians) vs. "agriculture-based civilization" (such as that of the Han Chinese). As a visitor from the agriculture-based civilization, the author immediately notices the respect the herders hold for the the wolf, a creature so hated and widely