Return to the Wolf Pack

In April 2010, while sketching on the Ruoergai grassland in Sichuan, the painter Li Weiyi rescued a dying wolf cub whose parents had been killed by poachers. She took it home to Chengdu and fed it, naming it "Green." Life in the city apartment was both tender and troubling: Green was utterly unguarded with humans yet longed for its own kind; the wolf's wildness and howls gradually surfaced, and there was no place for a wolf in the city. Two and a half months later, Li Weiyi decided to take Green back to the grassland so it could become a real wolf again. But reality proved harsher than imagined: a wolf raised by humans is hard for a wild pack to accept; poaching, severe weather, birds of prey, Tibetan mastiffs, and the ordeal of running out of supplies pushed them to the edge of life and death time and again. With help from her friend Yi Feng, Li Weiyi set up camp locally and, starting from the most basic hunting skills, taught Green bit by bit to recognize danger, track prey, and survive on the wilderness. Through their long time together, she also came to realize that her companionship and protection would ultimately stand in the way of Green's integration into the wild. After enduring bitter cold and peril, in February 2011 Green was finally accepted by a wild wolf pack, and Li Weiyi parted from it in pain. The book is compiled from the author's diaries and photographs over more than two years. It tells not a story of taming a pet, but of how one person learned to let go so that another life could gain the freedom it was meant to have; and it is this book that, years later, allowed the story of "Green" and the "wolf mother" to be rediscovered by more readers.