In I969, a young Chinese intellectual from Beijin answered Chairman Mao's call for city dwellers to go "up to the mountains and down to the countryside,joining as many as a hundred like-minded youngsters in traveling to one of China's most remote, most "primitive spots: north-central Inner Mongolia.

Searching for spirituality in 1960s China during the Cultural Revolution, Beijing intellectual Chen Zhen travels to the pristine grasslands of Inner Mongolia to live among the nomadic Mongols-the descendants of the Mongol hordes who once terrorized the world. At the core of their beliefs is the notion of a triangular balance between the earth, man, and the fierce, otherworldly Mongolian wolf whose fates arc all intricately linked. The few wolves that remain haunt the steppes locked with the nomads in a profoundly spiritual battle for survival.But when the peace is shattered by the intrusion of modernity, the age-old balance is disrupted, and life on the grasslands will never be the same. Part period epic, part fable for modern days, Wolf Totem is a heady immersion into the heart of Chinese and Mongolian culture.