Wolves in sheep’s clothing?

I remember Edinburgh in the 70’s. (OK that’s the 1970’s.) We had a little environmental thing going, not too deep green, just hugging whales and trying to preserve the bits of the planet that we hadn’t messed up with our fag ends and whisky bottles. There was one guy who was kinked out of his mind on wolves! I’m not sure he hadn’t been frolicking with the beasts in the wilds of somewhere, howling at the moon. He seemed fairly harmless. We let him have his exhibition and I’ve lost the posters. I’ve felt ever since that wolves have had a bad press. That image, thinner than was fashionable, rangy, lolling tongue and sardonic smile (if you’ll pardon the anthropomorphism) has stayed with me.

If we believe the FT Magazine 15/3/08 and the review by Donald Morrison, wolf worship is about to sweep the west, prior to the Beijing Olympics!

Wollf Totem by Jiang Rong, translated by Howard Goldblatt, is an award winning piece of Chinese fiction, a tale-within-a-tale of wolves and nomadic herders set in Inner Mongolia.

All good stuff with a poke in the eye for the old Han!

You Chinese have the courage of sheep, who survive by foraging grass.

We Mongols are meat eating wolves, and you could use a bit of wolf courage.

Nice one.

So! All you PLA chaps out there in Tibet, set to and show a bit of woofly courage. No holding back now! Box the trouble making vandals and antisocial elements about the ears until they know what’s what.

Be careful though! The Dalai Lama’s clique might tag your tanks while you're at it!