“And there’s more.” Uljii seemed somewhat stressed. “If there were no wolves, we and our livestock would be in big trouble during a natural disaster. When the grassland is hit by a hundred-year or two-hundred-year blizzard, the toll on our livestock is enormous. Then, when the snow melts, the ground is cluttered with the carcasses of dead cows and sheep that quickly begin to stink. If they aren’t buried, an epidemic could kill off half the people and animals of an entire banner. But wolves will dispose of the dead animals in no time. Plagues aren’t a problem as long as there are wolves around. We’ve never had one on the Olonbulag. In the old days, when wars were fought out here, the battlefields would be strewn with thousands of dead men and animals. Who disposed of them? Wolves. Old-timers tell us that if there’d been no wolves, a plague would have wiped out the human population of the grassland long ago. We can thank the wolves for keeping the Olonbulag a place with fresh water and lush grass. Without them, we wouldn’t have such flourishing herds. The communes down south have killed off their wolves, and their grazing land is dying. They’ll never raise livestock there again.”
Bao had been listening without saying a word as the three horses rode up a slope, with its fragrant green grass and the sweet fermenting smell of rotting grass from the year before. Meadowlarks singing in the air above them plunged down into the tall grass, while those on the ground soared up into the blue sky, where they hovered above the party and sang their own tunes.
Uljii sucked in his breath. “Isn’t that a gorgeous sight?” he exclaimed. “As unspoiled as it was thousands of years ago. This is the most beautiful grassland in China. Men and wolves have fought battles to seal this place off and keep it unspoiled over the centuries, and we simply must not let it come to grief in our hands.”
“You need to hold a study session for us students,” Zhang Jiyuan said, “to teach us what we need to know about the grassland and its wolves.”
Uljii’s face darkened. “I’m a deposed official. I don’t have the authority to hold anything. You need to learn from older herdsmen. They know more than I do anyway.”
After they crossed another ridge, Bao finally spoke up: “Uljii, no one will deny the depth of your feelings for the grassland or what you’ve accomplished. It’s your politics that get you into trouble. You talk about things that happened in the past, but this is a new age, an atomic age for China. Using primitive forms of thinking to deal with current needs is a big problem. I’ve thought long and hard since coming to the pasture. In terms of size, it is, as you say, the equivalent of a whole county down south, and a population of a thousand people is less than one of our villages. That’s incredibly wasteful. In order to create the greatest wealth for the party and the nation, we must bring an end to this backward, primitive nomadic way of life. I did a little exploring a few days ago. There’s quite a bit of land with black soil south of us, each section thousands of acres in size. I dug with a hoe and found that the topsoil was two feet thick. It seems a shame to devote good soil like that to graze sheep. At a league headquarters meeting, I asked an agricultural expert from an autonomous area about the land, and he said it was ideal for wheat. If we don’t attempt a large-scale reclamation project, only a few hundred acres, maybe a thousand or two, there’s no danger of desertification.”
Uljii said nothing, so Bao continued. “I looked into the water situation too. It’s easy to get to. We dig a trough and bring the river over.
We have plenty of cow and sheep manure, which makes ideal fertilizer. If we plant wheat there, I’ll bet that in the first year we’ll produce more per acre than they do in the Yellow River region. If we keep at it, in a few years agricultural production could outstrip livestock. When that happens, not only will we supply all our own food and animal feed, but we’ll assist the rest of the nation, where grain is in short supply. In my hometown the people don’t have enough to eat; on average they come up short by three months’ supply every year. Now, when I see all that good black soil left fallow and turned over to sheep to graze on for more than a month, it pains me. I’m going to plant an experimental plot, and if it’s successful, we’ll go all out. I hear that some communes down south are running out of grazing land and may have to stop raising livestock. They’ve decided to set aside land for crops, and I think that’s where Inner Mongolia’s future lies.”
Uljii’s face fell. “I knew this day was coming,” he said with a sigh. “You people never give a thought to livestock capacity. You keep forcing us to increase the numbers, and now you’ve gone on a wolf-killing spree, just waiting for the day when the grass is gone and you can cover the land with your crops. Your homeland was pasture a few decades back and was converted to cropland only a decade or so ago, but there isn’t enough grain to go around. This is already the frontier, so after you turn this fine pastureland into what you’ve got down there, where will you go next? The Xinjiang Desert takes up more space than any province in the country, and no people live in the Gobi. Would you call that a waste of land?”
“You needn’t worry,” Bao said. “I’ve learned the lesson of my hometown, and will make a distinction between land that’s arable and land that’s not. Going only one way-crops or pasture-is wrong. Half and half is the way to do it. I’ll do everything I can to safeguard the good pastureland and keep raising fine livestock. Without it we won’t have fertilizer. Where’s the grain production going to come from without manure?”
“When the farmers come out here,” Uljii said angrily, “and see this land, you won’t be able to control them. And even if your generation somehow manages, how will you control the next generation?”
“Each generation controls its own affairs,” Bao said. “The next generation is not my concern.”
“Do you still plan to hunt down the wolves?”
“Not supporting the hunt is what got you into trouble, and I won’t take that path. If the wolves wound up massacring another herd of horses, I’d be in the same fix as you.”
They saw chimney smoke above the base camp off in the distance. “By giving you an old horse, those upstarts at pasture headquarters have really slowed us down.” He turned to Zhang Jiyuan. “When you get back to the herd, pick out a good horse for Uljii. Tell Batu I said so.”
“When we get to the brigade,” Zhang replied, “no one will let Uljii ride a nag.”
“I have things to do,” Bao said, “so I’ll go on ahead. I’ll wait for you at Bilgee’s. Take your time.” He loosened the reins and rode off at a gallop.
Zhang rode up alongside the plodding old horse and said to Uljii, “Old Bao treats you well enough. At headquarters they say he tried to get them to keep you in the leadership group. But he’s ex-military and has his share of warlord habits, so don’t be angry.”
“Old Bao charges ahead on everything he does,” Uljii said vigorously and resolutely, “and he’s usually up there on the front line. There’d be no one better in a farming area. But out here he’s a danger to the grassland.”
“If this had happened when I first arrived,” Zhang said, “I’d probably have taken his side. Lots of people are starving in farming villages down south, while there’s all this land lying fallow. A lot of the students support his view. But I don’t see things the same way anymore. Yours is the visionary view. Numbers of grazing animals mean nothing to farming people, nor do those people understand the effects of human population. As for big lives and little lives, they don’t have a clue. Chen Zhen said there’s a simple grassland logic that’s been in place for a thousand years or more, one that’s in accord with objective laws of development. He thinks that the Manchu rulers had a brilliant policy during the first two hundred years of the Qing dynasty; they prohibited a large-scale migration of people from farming areas, believing that would have led to grievous consequences.”