1969. Chen Zhen, a young student from Beijing, is sent to Inner Mongolia so as to to educate a tribe of nomadic shepherds. But it is in fact Chen who has a lot to learn – about life in this vast, hostile, and breathtaking land, about the notion of community, liberty, and responsibility, and about the most feared and venerated creature of the steppes, the wolf. Seduced by the complex and almost mystical bond between these sacred creatures and the shepherds, he captures a wolf cub in order to tame it. But the burgeoning relationship between man and animal – along with the tribe's traditional way of life and the future of the world itself – is threatened when a regional representative of the central authority decides to do whatever it takes to eliminate wolves from the region.
