A Comparative Research On Ecological And Cultural Value Orientation Of Nomadic And Farming Culture In "Wolf Totem"

"Wolf Totem "is an ecology themed novel with wolf being the central story line; the story is set in 1960-1970s under the influence and conflicts of nomadic culture and farming culture in East Wuzhimuqin Elun grasslands.This paper consists of introduction, main body, and conclusion.Introduction: A general introduction of the reason, purpose, meaning of choosing the topic, as well as research methods and frontier research.The first chapter applies literature content analysis and analyzes factor of cross-cultural communication according to"Wolf Totem’s" main character’s ecological and cultural value with two different orientations. The first kind is nomadic culture with Elder Bilige representing Mongolian nomads and Zhen Chen representing Beijing youth intellectuals. The second kind is farming culture with Shun Gui Bao as the Mongolian leader from East Inner Mongolia with a half agricultural Hal nomadic background, as well as Beijing youth intellectuals such as Hong Wei Li.The second chapter analyzes and describes ecological and cultural value orientation of Mongolian nomads, East Inner Mongolian aliens, and Beijing youth intellectuals in Elun grasslands. Mongolian nomads coexist with nature; realize the importance of protecting "Larger life" with "Smaller life"; know intellectually the advantages and the disadvantages of animals and plants on grasslands; admire nomadic lifestyle, avoid setting fire and oppose reclamation. East Inner Mongolian aliens were heavily influenced by Han Chinese’farming culture and see nomadic culture as an undeveloped way of production; they think half agricultural half nomadic lifestyle is the way out for more developed grasslands and value how to make use of animals and plants rather than protecting the ecology system. Beijing youth intellectuals, with Zhen Chen being the main representative, were heavily influenced by nomadic culture; they understand and agree with the relationship between "Larger life" and "Smaller life", and the critical role that wolf plays in protecting ecology system of the grassland; their ecological and cultural value orientation lines up mostly with Mongolian nomads.The third chapter discovers and analyzes the cultural conflict caused by different ecological and cultural value orientation. The conflicts are: Main conflict (cultural conflict between Mongolian nomads and aliens as well as youth intellectuals and aliens,) secondary conflicts (cultural conflicts caused by age difference inside Mongolian nomads as well as difference in education level among the youth intellectuals).The fourth chapter is a research asking how different ecological and cultural value orientation came about, mainly from three aspects:the difference of natural and geographical environment between nomadic culture and farming culture, policies regarding Elun grasslands’ social lifestyle (killing wolves to eliminate harm, excess reclamation, blindly adding numbers of animals and herds, "non- nomadic nomads, growing population of people and animals," youth intellectuals volunteering up and down the mountain, etc) as well as cultural influence caused by migrating population.The conclusion applies cross-cultural communication theory and is derived from decoding cultural conflicts caused by interpersonal communication between nomadic and farming culture which is: the research subject of cross-cultural communication is not limited to communication between a country and an ethnicity; if the environment where one grew up is different from another, and causes differences in cultural value orientation, that means even if different group of people live in the same Elun grassland, their interpersonal communication will face difficulties during production nonetheless. In other words, a person not only belongs to a nationality, a person is more a product of a culture.