Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong

Author:Jiang Rong
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), General Fiction
ISBN: 9780143115144
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

Chen Zhen stirred the milk and meat porridge. The rising steam smelled so good that all the dogs were lined up at his door whining hungrily. The porridge was for the wolf cub.

Gasmai had taught him the secret of feeding puppies. "They need to be fed milk and meat porridge as soon as they’re weaned,” she said. “It’s a sure-fire way to get them to grow big and strong. What they eat the first three or four months after being weaned determines their growth patterns, especially their bones. If you miss that window, you won’t have big, strong dogs, no matter what you feed them after that. Well-fed pups can grow to be twice the size of poorly fed pups, which will never be decent wolf fighters.”

Once, when their team was hauling rocks to build a wall, Gasmai pointed to someone else’s squat, skinny dog with ratty fur and whispered to Chen, “That dog is from the same litter as Bar. Quite a difference, wouldn’t you say?” Chen found it hard to believe that two dogs from the same litter could be so different. “On the grassland, it’s not enough to have dogs of good breeding; you also have to feed them aggressively.” Chen took that to heart, attending carefully to what went into his cub’s stomach. He followed Gasmai’s puppy recipe to the letter.

Gasmai had added, “After puppies are weaned, a contest develops between women and wolf mothers. The wolves hunt ground squirrels, marmots, and lambs to feed their young and teach them how to hunt.

They’re good mothers. No stoves, no fires, no pots, so they can’t make meaty porridge for their young. But their mouths are better than the pots we use. They turn the squirrels and marmots into a soft, warm meaty mix with their teeth, their saliva, and their stomachs, just what their cubs need and like. They grow like weeds.

“Women on the grassland earn work points by taking the night watch with their dogs, which is why they must be even more conscientious, more hardworking than the wolf mothers. Lazy women raise mongrel dogs; good women raise big dogs. Look at a dog and you’ll know what sort of woman lives in that yurt.”

Chen had changed many of his habits once he’d taken on the responsibility of raising a wolf cub, and Zhang Jiyuan teased him by wondering when he’d become so industrious, so motherly. In fact, Chen felt that he took more care than either a wolf mother or Gasmai. By increasing the number of daily chores he did, he was given the go-ahead by Gao Jianzhong to take some cow’s milk, which he supplemented with a meat pulp. Milk was clearly inadequate for developing strong bones; additional calcium was essential, which he supplied by including shavings of soft bone in the meat. He’d even gone to the medical clinic at the pasture headquarters to get some calcium tablets, which he ground up and mixed into the meat, something that neither the wolf mother nor Gasmai could have thought of.

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