The Fox Wife Whose Pranks Cured a Fool / 小翠

A retelling of Pu Songling's tale of a debt paid in games, a marriage that ended in cure, and a face that came back on another woman

From Liaozhai Zhiyi (聊斋志异 · Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), Volume VII

After Pu Songling (蒲松龄, 1640–1715) · Retold in English with annotations

Before You Begin

There is a rule inside Pu Songling that is easy to miss if you read only one story: kindness done casually to a strange animal in youth returns, twenty or thirty years later, as a marriage.

The debt is never repaid in the direction you expect. The person who did the kindness rarely benefits directly. What comes back is a marriage arranged for one of his children — usually the one nobody else would marry — and the bride is always a fox, or the daughter of a fox, or something older than that which the writer only implies.

Xiao Cui (小翠 — "Little Green" or "Little Kingfisher-Blue") is the purest example of this pattern in Liaozhai. The debt sits at the very back of the story. The man who incurred it — Wang the Ministry Official — is by now an old, high-ranking, easily-offended bureaucrat, and he has completely forgotten that as a teenager, one afternoon in a thunderstorm, he covered a wet frightened fox with his raincoat.

His son, Yuanfeng, is what the classical writers called 痴 — chī — "foolish," but the word covers a wide range. Yuanfeng at sixteen cannot tell men from women. He does not dress himself. He does not speak coherently. He is a beloved, protected, unmarriageable child. And it is for him, not for the father, that the debt will finally be paid.

The bride who arrives to pay it is unlike any other figure in Liaozhai. She is not sorrowful. She is not seductive. She is a mid-teenage girl who plays, laughs, and — for one terrifying year in the middle of the Ming dynasty — turns a Ministry official's household upside down with a series of stunts that look like the work of a spoiled prankster and are, without exception, invisible acts of magic.

By the end of this story you will have watched her dress her husband as an emperor, kick a ball at a visiting official's face, boil her husband alive, and break a jade vase worth twenty gold pieces. You will also have watched her cure his epilepsy, ruin his father's political rival, and arrange his second marriage — to a woman with her face.

Then she leaves.

The two things Pu Songling is most interested in here are: what kindness looks like when a fox does it, and what love looks like when it must be arranged rather than fallen into.

The Cast

• Wang the Ministry Official (王太常): a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ming government. As a young man he was a village scholar, generous, still poor. As an old man he is powerful, easily embarrassed, and quick to take offense. He does not remember the fox.
• Wang Yuanfeng (王元丰): his only son. Sixteen years old at the start of the story. Cannot dress himself. Does not know that men and women are different kinds of people. His parents are terrified he will never marry.
• Mrs. Wang: the mother. A woman who loves her broken son and can barely admit to herself how afraid she is for him.
• Xiao Cui (小翠): the girl who arrives. Aged fifteen or sixteen. Beautiful. Perpetually laughing. Never explains anything. Her mother, whom nobody in the household ever sees again after the wedding, is the fox Wang once covered with a raincoat.
• Grand Secretary Wang (王给谏 · here rendered "Wang the Censor"): a political enemy of Wang the Ministry Official. Lives next door. Watches for any slip that would let him bring down his rival.

The Story

The Raincoat and the Fox

Long before any of this, when Wang the Ministry Official was still a village boy walking home from a friend's house, a summer thunderstorm broke over the road. He had a straw raincoat and a pair of dry sandals under his arm. As the rain came down and the sky flashed white, a small creature came scrambling up onto the raised path where he was walking — a fox, wet through, panting, terrified of the lightning. In classical Chinese fox lore, the celestial thunder-god has an old score to settle with foxes who have cultivated themselves too far, and any fox caught in the open during a bad storm may be genuinely trying to run for its life.

The boy did not know that. He only saw a frightened animal. He took off his raincoat, threw it over the fox, and let the animal shelter under it until the storm rolled off eastward. When the sky cleared and the fox had gone, he picked up his soaked coat and walked home. He did not tell anyone. It was the kind of small thing you do at fifteen and then forget you did.

Thirty years passed. He passed the imperial examinations. He rose in the ministries. He got married. His wife bore him one son. And that son, from the age of about three, was clearly not right.

A Son Who Could Not Learn Anything

By sixteen Yuanfeng still could not name the difference between men and women. He could not put on his own outer robe. If left in a room by himself he might wander out with his belt loose, or forget where his shoes were. His mother dressed him every morning. His father, who dealt every day with censors and imperial memoranda, would look at him across the dinner table and go very quiet.

The Wangs had tried every doctor in the capital. They had tried three temples. They had asked a Daoist priest whether some spirit had entered the child. Nothing worked. The boy was cheerful, affectionate, easily distracted, easily calmed, and hopelessly stuck at the mental age of a young child. Nobody would agree to a betrothal. Rich families with cousins to marry off politely stopped mentioning them. The Wangs, who had prepared themselves years earlier for the pleasure of arranging a match for their only son, had by his sixteenth year stopped mentioning the subject to each other, because it made them both furious in different directions.

Then one afternoon a woman came to the gate.

The Woman at the Gate

She was neither rich nor poor. She was dressed carefully but not ostentatiously. She had with her a daughter of about fifteen or sixteen years old — the writer says only that she was beautiful in a way that seemed to make the air a little less heavy in the room where she stood.

The woman said her name was Yu. She said she had a daughter of marriageable age. She said she had been asking around the neighborhood for a suitable son-in-law and had heard about Yuanfeng. She would, she said, be glad to have him.

Mrs. Wang, who was the one who received her, thought at first that this was a mistake. She said carefully: You have perhaps not been told the full situation about our son.

The woman said: I have been told everything about him. I would still be glad to marry my daughter to him.

Mrs. Wang, who had spent five years being turned away by other families, felt her hands go cold. She asked what dowry would be expected. The woman said: None. My daughter has a difficult life at home. I am asking you to take her. There will be no gifts either way. If you wish to send betrothal gifts, do not. Only, take her.

Mrs. Wang asked whether the woman would like to consult her husband, or a matchmaker, or wait for a formal exchange. The woman said: I am consulting no one. I am asking you today. If you say yes, my daughter comes with me tomorrow and I will bring her back the day after with her clothes.

Mrs. Wang, still in the same daze, said yes.

The next day the girl was brought. She was — the story says — even more beautiful in the daylight than she had been indoors. She wore a plain green robe. She was named Xiao Cui, Little Green. She smiled at Yuanfeng, who had been paraded out into the courtyard for her to see. Yuanfeng smiled back — he smiled at everyone — and she went with him back into the house as though he were an ordinary bridegroom and this were an ordinary day.

The mother did not stay for tea. She left with a small bow and did not visit again.

Mrs. Wang watched her go. She would later realize that no one in the neighborhood had ever heard of a family named Yu. She would realize that the woman had not, at any point, actually asked her anything about the household, the wedding rites, or when her daughter might visit her. She had come, given the girl, and vanished.

By then it was too late to give the girl back. And in any case, no one wanted to.

The Bride Who Played

For the first month Xiao Cui behaved like an ordinary bride. She was polite to Mr. Wang. She was affectionate to Mrs. Wang. She dressed Yuanfeng in the morning. She learned the layout of the house. She sat quietly at dinner. Mrs. Wang, who had been braced for something to go wrong, began to allow herself to hope.

Then, one afternoon, Xiao Cui found a large embroidered ball — the kind that in Ming games is thrown or kicked between courtyards. She took the ball into the main courtyard. She summoned Yuanfeng, who came running. She dressed him in a costume: a yellow silk robe from her own trunk, a hat she had made from paper the day before, and — because she had found it lying somewhere she should not have found it — a strip of imperial-yellow silk from Mr. Wang's own ceremonial storage, wrapped around his head as a crown. She stood back and admired him. She told him he was the emperor. She began to kick the ball around him in a circle, laughing. Yuanfeng laughed too. He believed her.

At that moment Mr. Wang walked into the courtyard on his way to his study and saw his son dressed as the emperor.

For a Ming official, dressing anyone in imperial regalia — even as a joke, even a mentally slow son of your own — was a form of treason so raw that most families never even joked about it in private. Wang the Ministry Official went white. He roared at Xiao Cui. He tore the yellow silk off Yuanfeng's head with his own hands. He accused her of trying to bring down the family. She only stood there and looked at him, mildly, and said nothing.

His wife came running. His wife apologized. His wife took the ball away. His wife knelt and begged Xiao Cui, in front of everyone, please, please, remember the difference between fun and treason. Xiao Cui apologized softly. She did not appear ashamed. She appeared, if anything, mildly amused, as though a joke she had made had not landed.

By the next morning she was doing something else.

The Ball That Started a War

The house next door belonged to Wang the Censor — no relation, but a rival. Wang the Censor had been trying for two years to catch Wang the Ministry Official in some indiscretion that could be reported to the emperor. He watched the household constantly through his upper window.

One morning, Xiao Cui was again playing with a large embroidered ball in the front courtyard. She kicked it, on purpose or not on purpose, over the wall.

It landed in Wang the Censor's courtyard just as he was walking out to greet a guest. It struck him in the face.

Wang the Censor came storming to the gate. Wang the Ministry Official came out to apologize. Wang the Censor — furious, humiliated in front of his guest — announced loudly, across the alley, that he was going to write up a formal complaint against his neighbor. He turned to go back inside.

At that moment Xiao Cui appeared at the gate. She was carrying, of all things, a small stuffed doll dressed in the exact style of a Ming court robe — a robe of the kind worn by officials only above the fifth grade. She held the doll out toward Wang the Censor. She smiled at him. She said, brightly, Look what I made for the neighbor. Doesn't he look important?

Wang the Censor's guest — who had, until that moment, been the Censor's political ally — recognized the robe on the doll as the exact robe of a promotion the Censor had been secretly angling for behind the emperor's back. He looked at the Censor. The Censor looked at the doll. The Censor looked at his guest.

The guest bowed and left the alley without another word. Within a month he had reported the Censor's illicit ambition. Within three months the Censor had been demoted, disgraced, and sent to a distant province.

Wang the Ministry Official, when he pieced it all together, was too frightened of what his daughter-in-law appeared to know about political affairs to punish her. He said nothing. He watched her more carefully.

The Boiling Bath That Cured Him

Yuanfeng, from about the age of ten, had suffered from an intermittent condition the doctors had never named — sudden fits in which he would go rigid, foam a little at the mouth, and lie for a quarter of an hour as though dead. His mother had learned to hold him through them. His father had learned to leave the room. The fits had been growing more frequent.

One evening, Xiao Cui prepared a large wooden tub in the bath chamber. She filled it with water so hot the servants complained the room was fogged. She wrapped Yuanfeng in a heavy quilt, from shoulders to feet. She carried him — a slight, laughing boy — into the bath chamber and, with the servants watching in horror, lowered him quilt and all into the scalding water.

Mrs. Wang, hearing the servants shout, came running. She found her son fully submerged in a tub of steaming water, wrapped in a quilt, and Xiao Cui sitting calmly on a stool next to him, holding his head above the surface with one hand.

Mrs. Wang, for the first and only time in the story, screamed at her daughter-in-law. She called her a demon. She said she would kill her with her own hands if the boy died. She dragged Yuanfeng out of the tub. She unwrapped the sodden quilt. Yuanfeng was — as far as anyone could see — completely limp, eyes closed, not breathing.

He was dead. For a moment he was dead.

Then he opened his eyes. He sat up. He said, in a normal voice that his mother had not heard in ten years, Mother, why am I in a bath?

His mother stared. She turned to look at Xiao Cui. Xiao Cui was smiling and drying her hands on a cloth.

Yuanfeng, from that afternoon on, no longer had fits. He also — slowly, over the next several weeks — began to speak more coherently, to dress himself, and to laugh at jokes he had previously only mimed laughing at. He was not a genius. He was, however, at last a young man of ordinary intelligence.

Mrs. Wang, who had spent sixteen years praying for exactly this, did not know how to thank her daughter-in-law. She tried once. Xiao Cui waved it away, said something meaningless about hot water being good for the constitution, and went outside to play with another ball.

The Jade Vase and the Departure

There was, in the household, a jade vase. It had belonged to Mr. Wang's grandfather. It was worth, the family estimated, roughly twenty gold pieces. It stood in the main hall on a lacquered stand. Nobody was allowed to touch it.

One afternoon Xiao Cui, chasing a ball across the hall, knocked it off the stand. It shattered into six or seven pieces.

Mr. Wang, coming home an hour later, saw the pieces on the floor. He asked who had done it. The servants pointed to Xiao Cui. Mr. Wang, who had not truly recovered from the emperor-costume incident, and who had not — despite everything — ever quite forgiven Xiao Cui for how frightened she made him, exploded. He shouted at her. He called her a wild animal. He said she had never been suitable for the household and had brought nothing but shame. He said her mother had abandoned her and now he saw why.

Xiao Cui listened. She did not defend herself. When he was finished she looked at him quietly and said:

I have paid the debt I came to pay. The vase was the last piece of it.

He stared at her.

She said: Thirty-one years ago, on the mountain road from Zhouzhuang to your village, you covered a wet fox with your raincoat during a thunderstorm. That fox was my mother. She had been running from the celestial thunder. She was carrying me. If you had not covered us, we would have both been struck. She asked me, when I came of age, to marry your son for one year — one year exactly — to shelter him back in the same way you had sheltered her. His fits are gone. His mind is returned to him. The one who wanted your family destroyed is destroyed. My mother's debt is now paid.

She turned to Mrs. Wang. She said: I will find him a wife before I go. She will look like me. He will not grieve.

She turned to Yuanfeng, who was standing in the doorway staring at her.

She said: Do not follow me tomorrow morning. If you see me on the road, do not call out. If you call out, I will not be able to look back.

Then she went to bed.

The next morning she was gone. So were her clothes. The rear gate was open. On the table in her room she had left a paper folded in half. Inside the paper was the address of a young woman from a scholar's family in the next district, whose parents were willing to consider a match. The paper said, in Xiao Cui's clear small handwriting: This girl will look like me. Marry Yuanfeng to her. Tell him nothing.

Mrs. Wang, weeping, went to visit the family a week later. The daughter came out with tea. She had Xiao Cui's face.

Yuanfeng, when he was introduced, went pale for a moment and then said quietly, Mother, this is Xiao Cui.

Mrs. Wang, who had promised herself she would say nothing, said nothing.

The wedding took place two months later. Yuanfeng and his new wife — whose real name is not given in the story — lived long, happy, ordinary lives. They had three children. Yuanfeng became a minor official in his own right. He never again spoke Xiao Cui's original name. He was seen, once, standing in the courtyard at dusk holding a small embroidered ball, turning it slowly between his hands. His mother watched him from the window. She did not go out to disturb him.

Afterword — A Note on What Repaying Kindness Means in Pu Songling

There is a temptation, when reading this story in translation, to file it under fox spirit repays her rescuer and move on. That would be a mistake.

Pu Songling is doing three things at once here.

He is telling us that kindness travels through generations. The debt Xiao Cui pays is not to the old official who now shouts at her. It is to the teenage boy that old official once was, who saw a wet animal in a storm and did the smallest imaginable thing about it. The old man has forgotten. The fox has not. In Pu Songling's moral world, kindness is never wasted, but it is almost never repaid to the person who did it. It is repaid to that person's child, or grandchild, or to the child of the neighbor who once helped. This is why the whole edifice of Confucian ancestral virtue is, in Pu Songling, oddly stable: not because Heaven keeps score in any obvious way, but because someone in the room always remembers.

He is telling us that healing sometimes looks, from the outside, like abuse. Xiao Cui appears to torture her husband. She scalds him. She dresses him in dangerous costumes. She frightens the household. Each of these acts is, in fact, a piece of shamanic medicine adjusted precisely to his condition. Pu Songling — who was himself a village teacher watching his neighbors' children suffer from every kind of undiagnosed illness — is registering the fact that a great deal of what village healers did in the seventeenth century looked terrible and worked. He does not moralize about it. He simply notes that Xiao Cui is not cruel. She is competent.

He is telling us, finally, that love is possible even when it has been arranged. Yuanfeng did not choose Xiao Cui. Xiao Cui did not choose Yuanfeng. Their marriage was a debt-repayment. And yet, by the time she leaves, he cannot bear it. He cannot even bear the sight of her second self walking through his gate two months later, wearing her face. He has fallen in love with a marriage he did not consent to and cannot keep. Pu Songling, who lived his whole life inside the marriage-arrangement system he never once wrote against politically, is quietly telling us that inside that system there was room, sometimes, for the whole strange business of love to grow anyway.

Xiao Cui, we are meant to notice, does not say she loved Yuanfeng. She only says the debt is paid.

But then she arranges the second wife. She specifies the face. She writes the letter that will allow him to go on.

Pu Songling does not say, in this story, whether that is love or not. He leaves that to the reader.

Retelling by Cathay Tales. Source: 《聊斋志异》卷七·小翠 (Pu Songling, c. 1680, edited woodblock edition of 1766). Historical notes on Ming-dynasty official ranks and fox lore drawn from standard commentaries.