A young artist's life with wolf cub

（China Daily）  08:23, January 18, 2013  

Key Words: artist; painting; wolf; animal
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A young artist sketching in remote grasslands meets a wounded wolf cub, and finds new purpose in life, Mei Jia reports.

For Li Weiyi, a Chengdu-based painter born in the 1980s, her sketching tour to Zoige grassland in northwestern Sichuan province offered an unexpected and life-changing encounter with an orphaned wolf cub.

His ears stuck to the head, his fur was hard and looked like dried grass. He was weak and nearly dead. I wanted to help," Li says, vividly remembering the first time she saw the cub.

The young painter has a gentle face and speaks softly in an interview in Beijing, her long hair braided. She seems an unlikely candidate for a wolf rescue.

Wolf Totem author Jiang Rong, whose book on the Mongolian wolf culture has sold millions, says it's a miracle that Li succeeded in doing what he failed to do as a younger man: adopt the cub, take him to the city, and return him to the grassland wilds.

Like Jiang, Li recorded her 10-month experience with the wolf.

She says she hopes her book, Return to the Wolf Pack, can change stereotypes about wolves and excite more people about preserving nature.