Blackcrane’s books bring animals to life
Gerelchimeg Blackcrane is more than 1.9 meters tall and when he shows up at public events, he wears Mongolian gowns.
The writer, born in northeastern Heilong jiang province, was raised by his grandmother on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
He is known for his animal tales, which have won him numerous literary awards and have been translated into many foreign languages.
Black Flame and The Nightjar at Dusk are two of his works available in English. The former is a novel about Kelsang, a lovable Tibetan mastiff, and his adventures.
Ian Tymms, a reader on goodreads.com, rates the book highly, and says: “(The book) reminds me of Jack London’s novels, that it’s from the perspective of a dog with a similar complexity to its narrative voice. The novel manages to be engaging and convincing without overly romanticizing the dog’s life. A special novel — in that the writer is from the Mongolian grasslands where the plot is partly set and he brings this world alive.”
Hailed as “a son of nature”, Blackcrane says he hopes to bring more such stories on nature to his readers, after a speech and an interaction with students from the Beijing Experimental School recently.
China Children’s Press and Publication Group recently released three of his novels and five collections of novellas and stories, including his representative works Gui the Tibetan Mastiff and Diao Lang, and new stories.
“I write fiction, but all the details I write are borrowed from the real world, and they tally with nature’s rules,” says Blackcrane.
“I never impose human imagination and emotion onto the animal characters. Otherwise, the works will be called fables or allegories, not animal stories,” he adds.
Speaking about the impact of his stories, he says: “Views on nature can shape the lives of our children. Mine were shaped when I was very young, and I know that in nature, everything has its position.”
He also does not avoid writing about death.
He recalls how his grandparents told him about how wild wolves had fatally injured his beloved foal.
“They said it was taken by the heavenly dog. And I know they were trying to teach me to accept what nature brings,” he says.
Blackcrane was born Bao Tiejun in Daqing in 1975. But he was sent to the grasslands in Inner Mongolia at 4.
“In the pasturing area deep in the grasslands, I, a kid from the city, was at first lonely until I got a handmade Mongolian gown and learned to ride horse,” he says.
He was also given two ivorywhite wolf dogs.
Before he returned to the city for school at 8, he also helped take care of wounded animals including a wolf cub, a fox, a swan, an owl and a deer.
“Back in the city, no one seemed to believe my stories, and when I heard about my dogs’ deaths, I got depressed. It was writing that finally saved me,” says Blackcrane.
Blackcrane got his first work published in fifth grade, and then went on to publish other books even as he still worked in an oilfield.
His father’s two older brothers were hunters in the Heilong jiang forests. Also, they provided him with valuable sources for his writing.
Blackcrane now has a camp near the Hulun Buir grasslands in Inner Mongolia, where he can “write, ride horses and raise dogs in the most natural way”.
At the camp he keeps some 40 dogs and spends at least three months a year there.
As for his routine there, he says: “I get up in the morning, boil water and feed the horses and dogs, after running them. Then, I sit down to write. This is a typical day when I am at the camp.”
Blackcrane says the dogs in his camps are given away free to the herdsmen there.
“We can’t keep asking for things from the grasslands, we need to pay something back,” he says.
Literary critic Cui Xinping says that Blackcrane’s language and details are based on his experiences.
“He is full of emotion and respect for the animals,” says Cui.
Zhu Ziqiang, a critic with the Ocean University of China, says: “Blackcrane does not examine nature for the sake of writing about it. He is part of nature and he can feel it.”
“So, we call his works ‘literature in motion’,” says Zhu.
Now, Blackcrane produces just one well-crafted novel a year.
He spent four years investigating in Inner Mongolia about the wild horses, and the result is the 120,000-word novel Blood Foal.
“I can write easily and smoothly, but that’s not what I want,” he says.