The Fox Woman Who Kept Her Vow / 任氏传

A translation of Shen Jiji's story of a fox who lived as a woman, loved one man, refused another, and died keeping her word

From the literary tradition of the Tang chuanqi (唐传奇) · By Shen Jiji (沈既济, c. 750 – c. 800)

Translated and annotated by Cathay Tales

Before You Begin

In the catalogue of Chinese supernatural beings, the fox woman usually arrives with a warning attached. She is beautiful because she is hunting. She loves in order to feed. In the tales collected long before this one, a man who beds a fox wakes thinner, sicker, sometimes dead; the fox has been drawing his life out under cover of the marriage bed.

Ren Shi Zhuan (任氏传 — "The Story of Lady Ren," or "The Account of Ren") changes the job description. It was written by Shen Jiji (沈既济), a Tang official, historian, and fiction writer who also authored Zhenzhong Ji (枕中记 — "The World Inside a Pillow," the source of the phrase "the yellow-millet dream"). The text is dated quite precisely by its own closing paragraph: it was composed in the second year of the Jianzhong era (781), after Shen Jiji and a company of officials travelled together southeast from the capital and passed the nights trading strange stories. The assembled gentlemen heard the tale of Ren Shi and asked Shen Jiji, who had known one of the men involved, to write it down.

The woman at the centre of it is, from the very first line, openly a yao (妖) — a supernatural being, a fox in woman's form. Shen Jiji does not conceal this from the reader for a later reveal; he states it as the premise. The story is not about discovering that she is a fox. It is about what she does with the knowledge that everyone around her, sooner or later, will discover it too.

She is the first fully developed "righteous fox" (义狐) in Chinese fiction — the ancestor of a lineage of faithful, eloquent, morally serious fox women that would run through the Liaozhai tales nine centuries later. She supports her lover, defends herself with an argument that stops a stronger man mid-assault, procures for the friend she cannot marry, predicts profit in the market, foresees her own death — and then walks toward it anyway because she has given her word. The praise at the end, unusually for Tang fiction, is written not by a later editor but by the author himself, and it is almost chivalric: "The feelings of a being not of our kind yet held something human in them."

This is a translation, not a retelling. I have followed the text in the order Shen Jiji wrote it, keeping its embedded poems of praise and dispute, and I have added notes on the Tang capital, its offices, and its folklore. The passages in quotation marks are translated from the original Chinese; where a sentence is given twice, in plain English and then in romanized Chinese, the second is there for readers who want the sound of the line.

I. The Three Women in the Lane

Ren Shi was a female supernatural being — a yao (女妖也).^{[1]A yāo (妖) in early Chinese usage is not the Christian "demon." It is an anomalous being — usually an animal, plant, or old object — that has acquired the power of transformation and speech, often by long cultivation. To call Ren Shi a nǚ yāo is to identify her species and power, not necessarily her moral character; Shen Jiji's whole story is devoted to proving that a yao may act with human virtue.}

There was a certain Director Wei (韦使君), whose given name was Yin (崟), the ninth child of his branch, a grandson by a daughter of Li Hui, the Prince of Xin'an (信安王祎).^{[2]Wéi Yín (韦崟) is the story's other principal, a real-enough Tang aristocrat type: grandson of Li Hui (李祎, d. 743), the Prince of Xin'an, a successful imperial general. "The ninth" (第九) denotes his birth order within the wider clan; Tang elites were commonly addressed by such a number. A shǐjūn (使君) was a respectful title for a man who held office.} In his youth he was reckless and fond of wine. His cousin's husband — the husband of his father's brother's daughter — was called Zheng Liu (郑六, "Zheng the Sixth"), whose given name the story does not record.^{[3]Zhèng Liù ("Zheng the Sixth") similarly takes his name from birth order. The narrator's note that his given name was not recorded lends the piece its documentary air: Shen Jiji presents the tale as heard from Wei Yin himself, with only the humble outsider's name lost.} Zheng had trained early in the military arts and was also fond of wine and women; he was poor and had no household of his own, and he lodged with his wife's clan. He and Wei Yin got on well and went about together inseparably.

In the sixth month of summer in the ninth year of the Tianbao era (750), Wei Yin and Zheng Liu were walking together through the streets of Chang'an, meaning to meet for a drinking party in Xinchang ward (新昌里). When they reached the southern end of Xuanping ward (宣平), Zheng made an excuse and asked leave to go off on his own, saying he would join them afterwards at the drinking place. Wei Yin rode his white horse eastward. Zheng rode his donkey southward and entered through the northern gate of Shengping ward (升平).

There he happened to meet three women walking along the road. Among them was one in white, whose face and colour were surpassingly beautiful. At the sight of her Zheng was startled and delighted. He whipped his donkey on, now suddenly ahead of her, now suddenly behind, wanting to make some advance but not daring. The woman in white kept glancing at him from the corner of her eyes, as though receptive.

Zheng ventured a jest:

"So beautiful as this — and walking on foot. Why is that?"

The woman in white laughed:

"You have a mount and don't understand enough to lend it. What else am I to do but walk?"

"My poor beast is not fit to replace a beautiful woman's walking," Zheng said. "I offer it to you now. For me, to follow on foot would be enough."

They looked at each other and laughed aloud. The women with her joined in the banter and the teasing, and little by little they grew familiar. Zheng followed them eastward until they reached the Leyou Plain (乐游园), when it had already grown dark. There stood a residence with earthen walls and a cart gate (土垣车门), its halls and chambers quite orderly and imposing. The woman in white was about to go in; she turned back and said:

"Please linger a little while."

And she entered. One woman slave, her attendant, stayed behind in the space between the gate and the screen and asked Zheng his name and rank. After he had answered, he asked hers in return.

"Her surname is Ren; she is the twentieth child (姓任氏，第二十)."

After a little while Zheng was invited in. He tied his donkey at the gate and set his cap on the saddle. He now met for the first time a woman of over thirty who came to welcome him — this was Ren Shi's elder sister. Candles were set out in rows and food laid before them, and the wine cups were raised again and again. Ren Shi came out having changed her dress. They drank deep and were extremely merry. Late at night they went to bed. Her lovely form and fine substance, the way she sang and laughed, her every gesture — all were dazzling, almost nothing the human world contains.

As dawn was coming on, Ren Shi said:

"You must go now. My brothers' names are enrolled in the Music Office (教坊), and their posts belong to the Southern Command (南衙);^{[4]The Jiàofáng (教坊) was the imperial Music Office, established to train entertainers, dancers, and musicians outside the older ritual music bureaucracy; under Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–756) it was vastly expanded. The "Southern Command" (南衙) refers to the government offices and imperial guards posted in the southern part of the capital. Ren Shi's claim ties her "brothers" to the entertainer class — a cover consistent with her later admission that her family were musicians.} they will rise and go out at dawn, and you cannot linger."

So they appointed a day to meet again, and he left.

II. The Pastry-Seller's Map

When he had walked on and reached the ward gate, the gate bars had not yet been opened. Beside the gate was an old acquaintance's shop selling sesame cakes; the lamp had just been lit and the fire blown up. Zheng rested beneath its awning and sat waiting for the morning drum, and fell into talk with the shop's master.

He pointed toward where he had spent the night and asked:

"Turning east from here — that place with a gate — whose family's house is it?"

"That is a stretch of ruined and abandoned land inside the earthen wall," said the master. "There is no residence there."

"But I have just come from it," said Zheng. "Why do you say there is none?"

He argued with him stubbornly. The master happened at last to understand, and said:

"Ah! I know what this is. There is a fox in there who often lures men to couple with her; I have seen it three times now. And so you too have met her?"

Zheng flushed with shame and hid the truth: "No."

When it was fully light he went back and looked at the place again. The earthen wall and the cart gate stood as before. But peering within, there was only tangled wasteland and a ruined vegetable plot.

Once back home, he met Wei Yin, who scolded him for missing the appointment. Zheng did not reveal what had happened and answered with some other excuse. Yet he kept thinking of her beauty and her allure, and he wished to see her once more; the thought of her stayed in his heart and was not forgotten.

III. The Meeting in the Cloth Market

About ten days passed. Zheng was out walking and entered a clothing shop in the Western Market (西市), when he caught a sudden glimpse of her, with the same woman slave as before in attendance. He called out to her at once. Ren Shi turned sideways and moved this way and that through the thick crowd to avoid him. Zheng kept calling and pressing forward until at last she stood with her back to him, holding a fan over her rear:

"You already know what I am. Why come near me?"

"Even knowing it, what is there to fear?"

"The thing is shameful and disgraceful," she answered. "I can hardly show my face."

"I have thought of you this constantly," said Zheng. "Could you bear to abandon me?"

"How would I dare abandon you? I only fear your finding me revolting."

Zheng swore an oath, his words and intent growing ever more earnest. Ren Shi then turned her eyes back and put down her fan; her brilliance was as dazzling as before. She said to him:

"Women in the human world like me are not one but many; you simply do not recognise them. Do not be so astonished at me alone."

Zheng asked her to come and renew their pleasure. She answered:

"What makes those of my kind hated and shunned is nothing else — it is that they injure people. But I am not like that. If you do not find me revolting, I am willing to spend my whole life in your service, holding your towel and comb."^{[5]"Holding your towel and comb" (奉巾栉) is a classical formula for becoming a wife or concubine and performing personal service; the comb and washbasin imply the intimacy of the inner chamber. Ren Shi's offer is therefore a proposal of lifelong, wifely fidelity — the moral pivot of the tale.}

Zheng promised to arrange a place for them to live. Ren Shi said:

"East from here, where a great tree rises above the roof beams, there is a quiet lane and a gate one can rent to dwell in. Some time ago, south of Xuanping — the man on the white horse who went east — was he not your wife's brother? His household has many furnishings and utensils; they can be borrowed."

At that time Wei Yin's uncles and cousins were away on service in the provinces, and the furnishings of all three of their courtyards had been stored away. Zheng sought out the house as she described, then went to Wei Yin to borrow utensils. Wei Yin asked what they were for.

"I have newly found a beautiful woman," Zheng said. "I have rented a house for her; I would borrow these to furnish it."

Wei Yin laughed:

"Judging by your looks, you must have got some weird and hideous creature. Where would any surpassing beauty come from?"

Wei Yin nevertheless lent him all the equipment of curtains and couches and mats, and sent the cleverest and sharpest of his household boys to follow along and spy. In a little while the boy came running back with his report, gasping for breath and streaming with sweat. Wei Yin went to meet him:

"Is there such a woman?" And then: "What does she look like?"

"How strange! Under heaven her like has never been seen."

Wei Yin's family by marriage was large and flourishing, and he had long gone about in idle pleasure and knew many beauties. He asked:

"Who is more beautiful — she, or a certain one?"

"She is not in that one's class!"

Wei Yin ran through four or five of his finest women in comparison, and to each the boy said, "Not in her class." At that time the sixth daughter of the Prince of Wu (吴王) was Wei Yin's inner-cousin, radiant as an immortal, and among the cousins she had always been ranked first. Wei Yin asked:

"How does she compare with the sixth daughter of the Prince of Wu's house?"

"Not in her class."

Wei Yin clapped his hand in astonishment: "Under heaven can there really be such a person?"

At once he ordered water drawn to wash his neck, bound up his head, and put balm on his lips before going.

IV. The Argument Beneath the Red Skirt

When Wei Yin arrived, Zheng happened to have just gone out. Wei Yin entered the gate and saw the young boy with a broom in his arms just sweeping, and a woman slave at the gate, and nothing else. He pressed the boy for answers. The boy laughed: "There is no one." Wei Yin looked all around the room and caught sight of a red skirt (红裳) showing beneath a door. He went close to examine it and found Ren Shi pressed into concealment behind the folding panels (扇间).^{[6]The shàn (扇) here is a fixed folding screen or door-leaf, not a hand fan; she has compressed herself behind the panel. The red skirt glimpsed beneath it is one of Shen Jiji's recurring colour signals: Ren Shi in the street wears white; in hiding, the eye catches red.}

He drew her out into the light to look at her. She exceeded even what he had been told. Wei Yin loved her to the point of madness; he then seized her and forced himself upon her, but she would not submit. Wei Yin used his strength to overpower her, and when it grew desperate, she said:

"I yield. Let me loosen myself a little."

But once he relaxed she held him off and resisted as before. This happened three or four times. Wei Yin then used all his force and held her fast. Ren Shi's strength was spent; her sweat was like a drenching rain. She judged she could not escape, and then let her body go and resisted no longer — but her expression and colour changed to one of grief. Wei Yin asked:

"Why this look of displeasure?"

Ren Shi gave a long sigh:

"How pitiable Zheng Liu is!"

"What do you mean?"

"Zheng has a body six feet tall and cannot protect one woman," she said. "Is that what a man is? And you, sir — you have grown up in luxury and splendour and have obtained many beauties; you have met many women my equal. But Zheng is poor and lowly. The one thing in all the world in which he found satisfaction was me alone. Could you bear, with your surplus of heart's desire, to take from another man his only sufficiency? I grieve that he is starving and poor and cannot stand on his own — that he wears your clothes and eats your food and is therefore in your power. If even chaff and husks could be supplied him, it would not have come to this."^{[7]Her phrase about chaff and husks (糠秕) argues that Zheng's dependence on Wei Yin exists only because the wealthy man has not supplied him even the meanest independence — and that Wei now proposes to exploit a dependency his own unshared surplus created. It is the story's sharpest social argument and the line that shames Wei Yin into releasing her.}

Wei Yin was bold and outstanding, a man of righteous fire. Hearing her words, he released her at once. He straightened his robe and apologised:

"I did not dare."

A moment later Zheng arrived, and he and Wei Yin looked at each other and made merry.

From this time on, all of Ren Shi's firewood, grain, meat, and provisions were supplied by Wei Yin. Ren Shi now and then paid visits, going out sometimes by carriage or horse, sometimes on foot, never fixed in one place. Wei Yin passed the days in amusement with her and was very happy. Whenever they grew playful and intimate there was nothing to which they did not go — only they never reached the disorder of the bed. Therefore Wei Yin loved her and valued her, grudging nothing; not one meal, not one cup, did he ever forget her.

V. The Brothel Matchmaker

Ren Shi knew that he loved her, and so she spoke to thank him:

"I am ashamed that you love me so greatly. Yet with this poor form of mine I am not fit to answer such generous feeling, and I cannot betray Zheng; therefore I cannot fulfil your desire. I am a woman of Qin, grown up in the city of Qin.^{[8]"A woman of Qin" (秦人) means a native of the Guanzhong region, the old Qin heartland where Chang'an stood — in modern terms, a local. Her next sentence concedes the related truth: her people were musicians, and her cousins are scattered through the pleasure quarters, which is why she can act as a broker of women for the friend she cannot marry.} My family were originally musicians and players (伶伦), and my cousins and relatives by marriage have mostly become favoured concubines; therefore I am acquainted with all the pleasure lanes (狭斜) of Chang'an. If there is some beauty you desire and cannot obtain, I can bring her to you. I wish to use this to repay your kindness."

"How fortunate!" said Wei Yin.

In the lane there was a woman selling clothes called Zhang Shiwuniang (张十五娘), whose flesh was smooth and white. Wei Yin had long admired her, and he now asked Ren Shi whether she knew her.

"She is my cousin. To obtain her is easy."

In a little over ten days she indeed brought her to him. After some months he tired of her and sent her away. Ren Shi said:

"A woman of the market is easy to obtain and not enough to show my skill. Perhaps there is some secluded, surpassingly hard-to-win one; try naming her, and I would wish to spend all my wit and strength on it."

"Yesterday at the Cold Food Festival (寒食)," said Wei Yin, "I was walking with two or three friends at Qianfu Temple (千福寺). I saw General Diao Mian (刁缅) setting out musicians in the temple hall. There was one who played the sheng (笙), about sixteen years old, with twin coils of hair hanging down by her ears, her charm and looks surpassingly rare. You must know her?"

"That is his favoured slave," said Ren Shi. "Her mother is my own elder cousin. She can be sought."

Wei Yin bowed to her before the mat. Ren Shi promised it. She then went in and out of the Diao household. After a month or more Wei Yin pressed her to ask how her plan went. Ren Shi asked for two bolts of silk (双缣) as a bribe. Wei Yin supplied them as asked. Two days later, while Ren Shi and Wei Yin were eating, Diao Mian sent a grey-headed servant leading a dark horse to fetch Ren Shi. At the summons she laughed and said to Wei Yin:

"It is done."

The scheme, when she explained it, was this: Ren Shi had first caused the favoured slave to fall ill, so that neither needles nor medicines gave relief (针饵莫减). Her mother and Diao Mian were extremely anxious and were about to consult a shaman. Ren Shi secretly bribed the shaman to point to her own dwelling and have him say that moving there would be lucky. When the shaman examined the illness he said:

"It is not auspicious for her to remain at home. She should go out and dwell at a certain place to the southeast, to take in the breath of life (生气)."^{[9]The shēngqì (生气, "living breath" or "vital energy") belongs to the geomantic vocabulary: a sick person is moved toward the direction from which fresh yang energy flows. The bribed shaman's instruction is the mechanism by which the girl is physically delivered into Ren Shi's house.}

Diao Mian and the mother enquired into the place — and it was Ren Shi's house that stood there. Diao Mian then asked to lodge the girl there. Ren Shi falsely refused on grounds that the place was cramped; only after earnest requests did she agree. They then carted the girl's clothes and ornaments and, with her mother, escorted her to Ren Shi's. Once arrived, the illness was cured. Before several days had passed Ren Shi secretly brought Wei Yin to lie with her. After a month the girl conceived. Her mother took fright and at once returned with her to Diao Mian, and from this the affair was broken off.

VI. The Horse with the Flaw

Another day Ren Shi said to Zheng:

"Can you raise five or six thousand coins? I mean to plan a profit for you."

"I can."

He then borrowed and begged among people and obtained six thousand coins. Ren Shi said:

"There is a man selling horses in the market; the horse has a flaw on its thigh (马之股有疵). You may buy it and keep it."

Zheng went to the market and indeed saw a man leading a horse for sale; the blemish was on its left thigh. Zheng bought it and brought it home. His wife's brothers all jeered at him:

"That is a cast-off thing. What do you mean by buying it?"

Before long Ren Shi said:

"The horse can be sold now. You should get thirty thousand."

Zheng then offered it. Someone bid twenty thousand; Zheng would not sell. The whole market said: "Why did he buy dear, and why does he now cling to it and refuse to sell?" Zheng rode the horse back home. The buyer followed to his gate and kept raising his price until it reached twenty-five thousand. He would not sell.

"Unless it is thirty thousand I will not sell it."

His wife's brothers gathered and scolded him. Zheng, unable to help himself, finally sold it — though in the end it did not quite reach thirty thousand. Afterwards he secretly watched the buyer and enquired into the reason. It turned out that an imperial post-horse of Zhaoying county (昭应县) with a flawed thigh had died three years before, and the clerk in charge had not at the proper time removed it from the register. The government was now assessing its value, which came to sixty thousand coins. Had he bought it at half price, his profit would still have been large; and with a horse on hand to make up the number, the price of three years' fodder and grain all went to the clerk. What he paid for the horse was small, and that was why he bought it.^{[10]The horse episode is an arbitrage on a ghost asset: the dead post-horse remained on the county register, so the clerk could keep drawing its forage allowance, and the government, discovering the fraud, assessed the animal's value at sixty thousand. A living horse with a matching flaw, bought cheap (for six thousand), supplied the proof-of-number at audit and let the buyer clear the debt — exactly the kind of bureaucratic seam an experienced capital insider could read.}

VII. The Dress She Would Not Have Cut

Ren Shi, again, because her clothes had grown old, asked Wei Yin for clothing. Wei Yin was going to buy a whole bolt of coloured silk for her, but Ren Shi did not want that.

"I would rather have a garment already made up."

Wei Yin called a market tailor called Zhang Da to buy it for him, and had him go to see Ren Shi and ask what she wanted. At the sight of her Zhang Da was alarmed and said to Wei Yin:

"This must surely be a being from heaven, of noble kindred, whom you, sir, have stolen away. She is not a fit thing for the human world. I beg you send her back quickly and not wait until misfortune reaches you."^{[11]The tailor's reaction — that Ren Shi must be "a being from heaven, of noble kindred" (天人贵戚), stolen away — dramatises the same dangerous beauty the pastry-seller had described from the other side of the social scale. His plea to return her "before misfortune reaches you" also foreshadows the ending: her beauty is read by ordinary people as evidence that contact with her is ruinous, though in fact she ruins no one.}

Such was the power of her face and colour to move people. In the end he bought clothing already made rather than sewing it himself; Wei Yin did not understand why.

VIII. The Road West

More than a year later Zheng, through a military posting, was appointed Guoyi Captain (果毅尉) of the Huali garrison (槐里府), in Jincheng county (金城县).^{[12]A Guǒyì Wèi (果毅尉) was a garrison vice-commandant in the Tang fubing (militia) system; the Huali garrison is placed in Jincheng county, west of Chang'an near modern Xingping — the posting that requires the fatal journey west. "Director-General of the Granaries" later (总监使) marks Zheng's eventual enrichment.} At this time Zheng had a proper wife; though he roamed abroad by day, he slept within at night, and he often chafed that he could not have the evenings to himself. About to take up his post, he invited Ren Shi to go away with him. Ren Shi did not wish to go:

"To travel together for a month or so is not enough to count as happiness. I ask you to reckon out my provisions; I will sit quietly and await your return."

Zheng begged her earnestly, and Ren Shi refused all the more. Zheng then sought Wei Yin's help and support. Wei Yin joined him in urging her and also pressed her for her reason. After a long while Ren Shi said:

"A certain shaman said that for me, this year, to travel west is inauspicious (是岁不利西行). That is why I do not wish to go."

Zheng was quite bewildered; thinking of nothing else, he and Wei Yin laughed aloud:

"Wise as she is in every other thing — and yet to be deluded by a yao! How can it be!"

They insisted on asking her. Ren Shi said:

"If the shaman's words should prove true, I would merely be dying for your sake to no purpose. What good is that?"

"How could there be such reasoning as that?" the two men said, and begged as before. Ren Shi had no way out and so set off. Wei Yin lent her a horse and saw her off at the farewell sacrifice at Lingao (临皋), waving his sleeve in parting.

After two nights' travel they reached Mawei (马嵬).^{[13]Mǎwéi (马嵬) station, west of the capital in modern Xingping, Shaanxi, is the most famous roadside post in Chinese history for events that occurred in 756, after the Tianbao world of the story had ended: during the flight from the An Lushan rebellion, the imperial guard there killed Yang Guozhong and forced Emperor Xuanzong to consent to the death of Yang Guifei. Setting a fox's death by imperial hounds at this same station, decades earlier in story-time, is a dark authorial echo Shen Jiji's first readers in 781 would instantly have felt.} Ren Shi rode her horse in front; Zheng rode his donkey behind; the woman slave, mounted separately, was behind him again. At that time the keeper of the western imperial stable had been training hunting hounds at Luochuan for ten days already. They met them on the road; the dark hounds came leaping out from among the grass.

Zheng saw Ren Shi fall suddenly to the ground, resume her true form (复本形), and race southward. The dark hounds chased her. Zheng ran after them shouting and could not stop them. After a li or more she was caught by the hounds.^{[14]A lǐ (里) in the Tang was roughly 450–530 metres depending on the measure used; "a li or more" (里余) is a short chase, perhaps six or seven hundred metres. The hounds' master has been training them at Luochuan for ten days, which explains their readiness and supplies the story's sense of a collision long prepared.}

Zheng held back his tears, took the money from his purse, ransomed her body, and buried her; he cut a piece of wood to mark the place. Looking back at her horse, he saw it grazing at the corner of the road. Her clothes were all laid across the saddle, her shoes and stockings still hung caught at the stirrups, like a cicada's sloughed shell (若蝉蜕然). Only her hair ornaments had fallen to the ground; nothing else was to be seen. The woman slave too had vanished.

IX. The Return

Ten days later Zheng returned to the city. Wei Yin was glad to see him and went to meet him, asking:

"Is Lady Ren well?"

Zheng answered with tears: "She is dead."

At the news Wei Yin too was overcome with grief. They clasped each other in the room and exhausted their sorrow. Little by little he asked the manner of it.

"She was killed by hounds."

"Hounds, fierce as they are — how could they kill a person?"

"She was not a person."

Wei Yin was horrified: "Not a person — then what?"

Zheng now told the whole story from start to finish. Wei Yin was so astonished that he could not stop sighing. The next day he had a carriage made ready and went with Zheng to Mawei; they opened the grave and looked upon her, and after a long lament returned. Thinking back over what had gone before, he found only the matter of the clothing she would not have made herself — that alone had been unlike other people.

After this Zheng became Director-General of the Granaries (总监使); his household grew very rich, and he had more than ten horses in his stable. At sixty-five he died.

During the Dali era (766–779) Shen Jiji was living at Zhongling and had often gone about with Wei Yin, who spoke of these events again and again; that is why the account is so full and exact. Later Wei Yin became Palace Censor (殿中侍御史) and concurrently Prefect of Longzhou (陇州刺史), and there he died without returning.

X. The Author's Praise

Alas — in the feelings of a being not of our kind there was yet something human (异物之情也有人焉)! Meeting violence she did not lose her chastity; she gave herself for another to the very death. Even among the women of today there are those who could not equal her.

It is a pity that Zheng was no man of discernment; he merely delighted in her face and never enquired into her nature and feeling. Had he been a scholar of deep understanding, he could surely have worked upon the principles of transformation (变化之理), examined the border between gods and men, set down the beauty of letters, and transmitted the subtle and marvellous of feeling — not stopped at the enjoyment of her manner and beauty alone. What a pity!

In the second year of Jianzhong (781), Shen Jiji, then moving from Left Reminder (左拾遗), travelled with the Jinwu General Pei Ji (裴冀), the Deputy Governor of the Capital Sun Cheng (孙成), the Director in the Ministry of Revenue Cui Xu (崔需), and the Right Reminder Lu Chun (陆淳) — all journeying to dwell in the southeast, from Qin to Wu, by water and land on the same road. The former Reminder Zhu Fang (朱放) followed them as a travelling guest. They floated down the Ying and crossed the Huai, their boats moving side by side; by day they feasted and by night they talked, each bringing forth his strange tales. The assembled gentlemen, hearing the story of Ren Shi, were all deeply moved and astonished; they therefore asked Shen Jiji to write the account, to record the marvel (以志异云). Composed by Shen Jiji.

Translator's Note

The first line of Ren Shi Zhuan does the work of an entire older school of fiction in six characters: Rèn shì, nǚ yāo yě — "Ren Shi was a female supernatural being." Everything the Western reader expects from a fox story — the delayed reveal, the husband's dawning horror, the exorcist's arrival — is foreclosed before the story begins. Shen Jiji is not interested in whether she is a fox. He is interested in whether she is good.

That question is answered in the scene that gives this tale its lasting strangeness: a wealthy aristocrat attempts to rape the kept woman of his poor friend, and she stops him not with magic — a fox of older legend had teeth enough, or illusions enough, to destroy him — but with an argument. Her appeal is legal and economic in character. Zheng lives in a state of dependency; he "wears your clothes and eats your food." To take his one possession is to convert patronage into a kind of double taxation by a stronger party on a weaker one. Wei Yin, a "man of righteous fire," is shamed into decency, and the story then performs an even more surprising manoeuvre: it makes the would-be rapist into Ren Shi's lifelong, unconsummated friend and provider. No one is punished into goodness here. He is reasoned into it.

The fox's famous powers are meanwhile distributed across the ordinary surfaces of Tang urban life. She reads the housing market and the used-horse market alike. Her horse scheme is worth pausing over, because it is not magic at all but an arbitrage on clerical fraud: a dead post-horse left on the books lets an official collect its keep; a live animal with a matching flaw stands in for the ghost asset at the audit. Modern readers may recognise the structure. Ren Shi does not conjure value; she finds the seam between two ledgers.

Her one failure to move events is the one that matters. She names her death plainly — west is inauspicious — and the two men laugh at her for being superstitious about a yao, which is a fine, bitter joke: they are willing to credit fox-women as lovers, hostesses, and business advisors, but not as prophets. She goes because she has consented, and consent, once given in front of the company, is a bond she will not break. The ending on the Mawei road deliberately reverses the imagery of the marriage night: the clothes that once proved the woman now remain empty, "like a cicada's slough," and the horse grazes untroubled. The hounds of the imperial stable — the same Mawei station where, seventy-five years later in history, the imperial guard would force the execution of Yang Guozhong and Yang Guifei during the An Lushan rebellion — do what hounds are trained to do to a fox. The supernatural body cannot survive inside the machinery of the state hunt.

Shen Jiji's closing praise contains an admission that should not be missed. He does not say Zheng Liu deserved her; he says the opposite, that Zheng "delighted in her face and never enquired into her nature," and he imagines the "scholar of deep understanding" who might have studied rather than merely enjoyed her. The story therefore asks to be read in exactly that spirit — as an account not of a curious animal but of a moral person who happened to be an animal. Nine hundred years before Pu Songling filled his studio with fox daughters and fox wives who argue, joke, keep house, and outjudge their husbands, Ren Shi walked the lanes of Shengping ward and established the type. Every one of those later fox women owes her the courtesy of an introduction.