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‘Animal novelist’ see parallels in human behavior
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Shanghai-born author Shen Shixi has been called the top “animal novelist in China.” He writes about humanity — love, death, survival and revenge — through the experiences of animals.
His works have been published in eight languages and have won national awards. The author, who now lives in the Minhang District, recently appeared at a local book fair to promote his latest works.
“Most of my books are written for children,” said Shen. “I want to tell them stories about the relationship between human and animals, to show that animals are loving, caring and smart.”
Shen said much of the material for his books came from his experience living close to primeval forestland in Xishuangbanna in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province.
“I was sent to Xishuangbanna in 1969, when I was 16, as an ‘educated youth’ to work in rural areas,” said Shen. “The village was on the verge of a vast forest. I saw 70 to 80 different kinds of animals there. And later they became the characters in my stories.”
Shen said he found peasants held different ideas from urbanites toward animals. For example, Xishuangbanna locals weren’t afraid of pythons. In fact, Shen said he once raised a black-tailed python that was nearly five meters long. He named him Aiying.
“When I first arrived there, I was afraid of the snakes,” Shen said. “Local families believe pythons keep watch over their babies. They would put a python under the hammock holding the baby to keep away rats, wild cats and centipedes.”
Children played with pythons as well.
“Actually, pythons are very docile,” said Shen. “They never bite unless attacked.”
Shen’s short story “Python Nanny” is about a snake protecting a family’s baby. The family eventually moves away from Xishuangbanna, leaving the python behind. The grief-ridden snake is too lonely to eat and eventually dies.
Shen, who never got beyond the first year of junior high school, started writing when he was 27. His first short story was about a group of elephants.
“I sent the story to a children’s literature magazine in Beijing,” Shen said. “The editor chided me for so many typos, but said he found the story theme quite fresh.”
Shen read books to educate himself and continued writing. In 1985, he published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled “The Seventh Hound.”
In Shen’s stories, animals often seem more emotional than humans. They have more trust in humans than humans have in them. They live in a world where they are hunted, but try their best to preserve their families and their packs.
In “The Seventh Hound,” an old hunter finally finds the perfect hound for his hunting companion, after looking for one for 40 years. The dog Chili is a good fighter and chaser, but one day while the dog is fighting a snake, the hunter is attacked by a wolf and barely escapes with his life.
Ignorant about the truth of what has happened, the hunter beats Chili and kicks him out. Chili becomes a wild dog but never forgets his old master. The dog is eventually seriously injured while protecting the old man from an attacking jackal.
Wolves and jackals are recurring characters in Shen’s books. Both breeds of animal made deep impressions on Shen when he was living in the wilds of Yunnan.
The author recalled an incident in his second year in Xishuangbanna.
“We went into the mountains and six wolves besieged us,” said Shen. “We didn’t have weapons with us, so we climbed a tree. The wolves lingered below us for two days, so we couldn’t come down.”
Jackals impressed Shen by their prowess in catching sheep.
“They would climb onto the back of a sheep, then bite and grip their prey’s ears,” he said. “Two jackals can drag a sheep alive into the mountains.”
In Shen’s stories, however, jackals and wolves are more than just fierce, cruel stereotypes. The animals are always struggling between their feral instincts and the heart to be better.
Shen’s magnum opus, the novel “Jackal and Wolf,” tells a story of love and revenge. Flame, a fine red jackal, lives in a cave in the mountains. One day, a wolf attacks, killing all of her newborn pups. When Flame finds the wolf dying in a human trap, she takes revenge on the wolf’s own pups — all except one. Finding that she can’t kill the last pup, Flame adopts the young wolf as her own, and they live as mother and daughter.
In another short story, “Red Milk Sheep,” an orphaned wolf pup is raised by a sheep named “Red Milk.” When the pup grows up, he shows dual personalities. He never hesitates to continue hunting sheep, but he protects Red Milk at all costs.
“The stories are actually about humans, but from a different angle,” said Shen. “Humans have the same struggle between being good and evil, between fate, or basic instincts, and free will.”
Shen said some of his books, such as “Jackal and Wolf,” became popular offshore before they eventually resonated with mainland readers.
“I think that’s because people here were still struggling with survival, with basic needs like food and shelter,” said Shen.
“It is natural that people are concerned first about their own self-preservation, and later about nature, other lives and the meaning of life as a whole. So literature on the Chinese mainland focused back then on people’s lives first. But recently, as society modernized, people started to pay attention to other things as well,” the writer added.
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