In late imperial narrative the Huli Jing 狐狸精 (Fox spirits) became symbolic of how overt female sexuality threatens intellectualism. Stories spanning the Tang to Qing dynasties recount similar tales of fox women seducing isolated scholars and feeding on their yang 阳 energy (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust”). The shape-shifting seductress is a common mythological trope, with other East Asian lore such as the Korean Kumiho (Yun 89) and Japanese Kitsune (Dorson 243) operating around similarly predatory narratives. Prior to sexual redirection during the Tang dynasty (He 36), Huli Jing were deified as auspicious, supernatural phenomena. As Jin dynasty writer Guo Pu 景纯 (276–324) described,
“There is a beast in Qingqiu, it is a fox with nine tails. Sometimes you can see it on the road; it will hold a book in its mouth when it is out. It will use the book as auspicious words and use it to make spiritual magic figures.”
These “beasts” were simultaneously worshipped for good fortune and feared for their association with death. Foxes “like to take up residence in existing hollows, including tombs,” (Huntington 7-8) creating strong visual association between fox sightings and morbidity. Eventually, a skull-wearing ritual was developed by which a fox spirit could turn into a young woman or man to seduce mortals (Stevens). These foxes “who were always attractive and often sexually promiscuous would seduce lonely men and women and bring illness or misfortune to their paramours” (Ditter et al. 38).
Popularised by the zhiguai 志怪 genre, the trickster Huli Jing inhabits a mythological grey area, neither alive nor dead. According to Ji Yun, “humans are yang, ghosts are yin. Foxes lie between humans and ghosts but are still in the category of yin” (Kang). Similarly, fox-adjacent human beings experience societal exclusion. Foxes became synonymous with the very real “floating class” (Kang 162) of Chinese prostitutes, concubines and performers who found themselves marginalized and “associated with lawbreaking” (Kang 163). During the Song and Tang dynasties Huli Jing were known and worshipped as guardians of prostitutes.
Although more gender-based protections are in place, the patriarchal system which grew the Huli Jing myths into those of sexual deviancy continues to impact cultural and political ideas of morality and legality. Female sexuality remains covert, and diversion from normative sexual behaviour is deemed highly unnatural (Ussher). As early as the Han dynasty, subversive women were blamed for both domestic and imperial downfall (Ebrey).
Overall, this essay seeks to argue the continued relevance of Huli Jing’s sexual mythology. These stories implicate the long-standing history of the Chinese gender mythos, and provide strong literary evidence of misogyny/gender discrimination in the late imperial dynasties.
In approaching this topic I would first like to acknowledge my personal limitations. The foundation of my research was formed by English translations and secondary sources as I am unable to read or write Chinese. Thus, a certain level of trust exists in the space between my thesis and certainty. Regardless, I will continue my argument.
The form of this essay is a comparative literary analysis; An exercise in drawing parallels between literary texts, feminist arguments, and legal documents in order to effectively argue the extended impact of Huli Jing on the Chinese cultural zeitgeist. In combination with personal analysis, this essay argues that the symbolic function of foxes mirrors or imitates patriarchal gender ideology.
In China there existed a distinct fear that female sexuality threatened both the quality and quantity of intellectual discourse. Scholars, and especially Confucist scholars, would apply their theory of energetics to blame fox seduction for waning vitality. All women were impacted, but none as much as prostitutes and courtesans who were directly associated with the seductive power of the Huli Jing. According to Pu Songling 蒲松龄 (1640-1715), “all prostitutes are foxes,” making their narrative functions in mythology “interchangeable” (Huntington 192). This is best evidenced by cases where one of the two impersonates the other. In a story by Ji Yun 纪昀 (1724–1805):
“A rich man whose clumsiness and slovenliness so disgust a prostitute he approaches, she claims to be a fox woman. As the story begins, the wealthy man is charmed by the sight of a beautiful young woman whom he flirts with, offering to help her walk on the slippery road. Coolly rejecting his advances, she pretends to have engaged in Taoist Inner Alchemy practices, refining her form by worshipping the moon rather than engaging in bewitching people to absorb their energy, warning him that if he persists, he will bring disaster down on himself. This encounter leaves the wealthy oaf apprehensive. When he later meets her at a friend's, she pretends that he has met her sister. Unsure if she is a monstrosity (guai) or a human, he invents an excuse to flee the dinner. After he has gone, the prostitute explains her ruse, to the amusement of the other guests. However, one of them argues that since she is a prostitute, she can hardly pick and choose among her clients, and given the wealth of this one, she has nothing to lose. Accordingly, the party presents her to the wealthy oaf, to whom the prostitute apologizes. After several nights with him, she has him billed at the monthly rate for each night. After a year of intimacy, he dies of a wasting disease.” (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust” 152-153)
Here, the prostitute’s deception over her true identity is indistinguishable from the deception by a fox impersonating a prostitute. Additionally, she harms the rich man in a fox-adjacent fashion. Both Huli Jing and prostitutes are shown to “drain men’s yang essence and endanger their lives” (Kang 74) through excessive sexual intercourse. On one hand, this suggests a fear of women holding sexual control over men. However, the guest who argues she “can hardly pick and choose” personifies the counterargument, touting the superior male sexuality and the degenerative role of prostitutes. This story is therefore a cautionary tale, warning of the equivalent danger of human and fox women. It positions their sexuality as inherently preternatural and threatening, feeding into patriarchal fears of female promiscuity.
According to Hammond, “in some cases the lover is entirely real [not a fox]; it is the belief in her supernatural character that is the illusion” (“The Personification of Lust” 157). These stories bear the burden of highlighting how negative stereotyping of the overtly sexual female impacts all women, regardless of profession. In one such narrative, a young man named Xiao Yingshi encounters a woman on his path, asking for a lift to a nearby town.
“In the early years of the Tianbao reign period (742—756) of the Tang dynasty (618-907), Xiao Yingshi, in traveling through the Lingchang District, once went as far as twenty li south of Zuo District. There was a Hu family inn there, and many people surnamed Hu lived by the inn. It had been late in the day when Yingshi set out from the district seat, and additional time had been spent at the farewell feast thrown by local officials, so in the end he did not get underway until it was almost dusk. By the time he had gotten only a few li south of the district seat it was already quite dark. A young woman of about twenty-four or twenty-five, dressed in a red blouse and green skirt, came along riding a donkey loaded with clothing. She addressed Yingshi saying, “My home is located twenty li directly south of here. Returning at this time, I find night has already fallen, and the idea of making the trip all alone terrifies me. May I accompany you, sir, and travel alongside your horse?” Yingshi asked the girl her family name. She replied, “My family name is Hu.”
Now, Yingshi had often heard it said by everyone that there were wild foxes who would sometimes appear as young men and sometimes appear as young women, and would seduce people in the twilight hours. Yingshi suspected that this girl was actually a wild fox. He spat at her and reviled her, saying, “You cursed wild fox. How dare you try to seduce ME, Xiao Yingshi!” He then whipped his horse and galloped south, rushing all the way to the main inn, where he rested and changed his clothes.
A long while later, the woman that he had seen earlier came in through the door, leading her donkey behind her. The old innkeeper asked her, “Why are you running around at night?” She replied, “If it was only running around at night it wouldn’t be so bad, but on the way just now I had the great misfortune of encountering a deranged pedant, who cursed me for a wild fox and tried to kill me by spitting at me.” This young woman was none other than the daughter of the old innkeeper. Yingshi was embarrassed to no end.” (Ditter et al. 38-39)
Xiao Yingshi’s assumptions reflect a broader sense of cultural paranoia towards fox demons. Rather than exercise self-restraint, men in these myths often fear sexual vampirism (Kang 74) to the point of irrationality or, as in this case, violence. Animalistic qualities are symbolically projected onto all women by the whims of men. The subsequent dehumanisation exposes the fault in characterising foxes as deceitful women; If some women (prostitutes) are untrustworthy foxes then all women have the potential to commit such acts of fraud. Ultimately, this “seductress” (Stevens 154) label treats female sexuality with unfounded suspicion and malevolence, justifying male violence and sexual compulsion.
There also exists a distinct mythology surrounding who is sexually responsible for the consequences of fox encounters. According to Ji Yun, one fox spirit defends taking a man’s yang energy:
“All of us who seek men to absorb energy have killed innumerable people, and the principle of Heaven cannot countenance it. When a man seeks a woman, it is because of feelings, and he may overindulge to the point of harming himself. Just like a man and his wife who take too much pleasure in each other, he may fall ill and suffer an early death. He brings that on himself. You can’t explain it as ghosts or spirits in the bedroom. Why do you blame me?” (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust”)
While the “you” here is explicitly the male victim, the broader implication is that prostitutes are blamed for the lack of sexual control demonstrated by men. In such a society, prostitution is framed as exploitative. Prostitutes are treated as sexual aggressors, rather than victims subjected to exploitation themselves. However, the moral pedagogy behind this niche of zhiguai clearly suggests that fault lies with the men who “overindulge” in sexual pleasure. In a different story by He Bang’e 和邦額 (1736-?), a maid’s father is mysteriously castrated after she insults a fox spirit. Importantly, at the time of this castration he was already having an affair with a prostitute in Henan. According to Huntington, “there is an implication that the servant [father] drew this disaster on himself with sexual indulgence” (44). By engaging excessively with a prostitute he incurred his own punishment. In both cases the blame imparted on women, the fox, the maid, the prostitute, can only be justified by the deeply misogynistic ideas which inform the caricature relationship between Huli Jing and woman.
Furthermore, the attitude of mutual blame- the prostitute for her profession and the client for purchasing her services -is continually reflected in contemporary Chinese law. There remains a legal crackdown on prostitutes (李琳), but there has been a somewhat significant shift towards punishing the major crime of pimping over the lesser crime of whoring. For example, a criminal record of “rape, of molesting or humiliating women with force, of organizing forcing, seducing, sheltering or procuring any other person or persons to engage in prostitution,” (Regulations on Control of Public Places of Entertainment) prevents offenders from inhabiting a managerial role in public venues. This is not to say there is no room for exploitation and abuse, but the clause focuses primarily on preventing the system of organisation behind sex work from growing. Ultimately, this conveys that prostitution is not a mark of preternatural or fox-like evil on the part of women, but rather the fault of a patriarchal system that seeks to exploit female sexuality. To what extent such exploits are remedied is debatable, but there is a clear concession of mutual responsibility.
There also exists an interesting parallel between the mythological and legal chain of higher responsibility. A man who died from sexual overindulgence tries to sue the women who seduced him in the underworld, “but the underworld court rejects the suit because he involved himself willingly” (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust” 161). In contrast to underworld non-involvement, contemporary law clearly states that any officials exhibiting a “laissez-faire attitude” (Regulations on Control of Public Places of Entertainment) towards prostitution and seduction is also at fault. This suggests a transition from the ultimate authority being spiritual to being legal. A collective sense of accountability informs modern approaches to social issues. Rather than passively accept that men are “victims of their own desire more than they [are] the fox’s [prostitute’s] victims, and they have only themselves to blame” (Hammond 160), the contemporary system invokes a multi-level responsibility for sexual encounters.
On the other hand, there remains strong anti-sex worker sentiment in newer legislation. According to the 2005 Law of the People’s Republic of China on Penalties for Administration of Public Security, “A prostitute or a person who goes whoring shall be detained for not less than 10 days but not more than 15 days and may, in addition, be fined not more than 5,000 yuan”. If foxes are synonymous with prostitutes, there still exists an element of blame and revulsion towards apparently exploitative performances of female sexuality. The mythology of the Huli Jing insists on the siphoning of male yang energy for the benefit of the supernatural yin of fox women. Huli Jing and therefore prostitutes are henceforth positioned as “sexually aggressive” (Huntington 188), a blatant diminishment of the demand and supply relationship between male sexuality and the responsive female prostitution (Neha and Marina). Cultural stigma against sex workers faults women for men’s sexual impulses. Huli Jing myths justify their lack of sexual self control by implicating foxes as temptresses and sexually deviant. Following that logic, responsibility falls on any woman in all sexual encounters. Due to her potential for being a fox she is always “asking for it” (Fraser).
The temptress archetype coalesces with male delusions of female sexual predation to create a foundation for the Qing ideological shift towards victim-blaming. During the dynasty there was a neo-Confucist focus on “female chastity” (Ng 57). The relationship between “sexual availability and peril” (Huntington 187) became causal rather than coincidental. While at least partly because of fears surrounding real venereal diseases (Huntington 190), fox myths evidence the genuine belief that “sexual fantasy” (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust” 151) was a legitimate cause of death. A decision was made to decriminalise rape if the victim did not “[struggle] against her assailant throughout the entire ordeal” (Ng 58). The burden of proving consistent non-consent is only logical if all women can be potentially mistaken for foxes, who, as previously discussed, are constantly pursuing sexual encounters. To prevent convolution a distinction must therefore be made between sexual responsibility and blame. The patriarchal ideology behind Qing dynasty fox narratives allows the men who are sexually responsible for acts to blame women’s inherent sexuality for lapses in control.
On the surface, the existence of male foxes would seemingly contradict everything argued thus far. However, male foxes are not punished for their sexuality like their female counterparts. According to Huntington, in stories about male foxes seducing human women, “male foxes are made a source of order and female humans a source of destruction bearing all the traditional stigma of foxes” (190). Rather than disprove this essay, such stories regularly demonstrate a positive attitude towards masculine possession and associate female submission with wealth. In Ji Yun’s Yuewei Caotang Biji for example, there is a story about a male fox obsessing over two prostitutes. This fox absorbs the women’s sexual energy until they are both dead (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust”). Despite the sexualised nature of late imperial fox demons, this story highlights that it is not sexuality in general but rather feminine sexuality that was so loathed. Male sexuality is normative, and therefore doesn’t necessitate suppression in the same way (Ussher). It is never acknowledged that the fox is a murderer, because his crime is justified by their lowly profession. Prostitutes take from others what the fox took from them; So the outcome is framed as a net good.
The power dynamic between men and women is never as clear as when a human man thwarts seduction attempts by a fox spirit:
“In the middle of the night, she appears before him. However, after several nights of intimacy the scholar decides that he is being beguiled by her and refuses to let her visit him anymore. When she expresses her resentment, the scholar tells her seriously that in the affairs of men and women, the power resides with men. If a man wants a woman who does not want him, he can rape her, but if a woman wants a man who is unwilling, even if she tries to rape him, there is nothing to be done.” (Hammond, “The Personification of Lust”)
Even the fox spirit, with her possession of supernatural charm and sexual prowess, lacks both safety and autonomy. This furthers the argument that foxes are synonymous with women in general, and represent the misogynistic paranoia towards female assertiveness. Additionally, it can be argued that by asserting how men always have more sexual power, the man in this story suggests that the men who control the narrative are the real foxes. Deceitful, exploitative, and responsible for their own business downfalls and sexual compulsions.
Lastly, this essay will touch on the relationships between the gender neutral (or male) fox and human men. According to a translation by Cogswell, “when foxes cannot attain their aspiration of retaliation, they use benefit to entice. They satisfy their opponent’s greed and make him cause disaster himself” (82). Although not explicitly related to sexuality, this manipulation addresses the dichotomic, self-serving impulses of fox spirits. In one Tang dynasty story:
“In the beginning of the Jianzhong reign period (780-784), one Scholar Wang of Hangzhou bade farewell to his family and went to the capital. He had gathered up his old writings, and planned to rely on family and friends to seek an official position.
When he got to Putian, he left the road to seek out an old estate owned by his mother’s family. It was late in the day, and he saw two wild foxes leaning on trees in a cypress grove, standing like human beings and holding a document on yellow paper. They chatted and laughed, facing each other, as if there were no one around. Wang shouted at them but they didn’t move, so he took out his slingshot and stretching it to the full, shot at them, hitting the one holding the document in the eye. The two foxes dropped the document and fled. Wang hurried over and got the document, which was just one or two sheets. The writing was similar to Sanskrit and he couldn’t understand it, so he put it in his book bag and left.
That night, he stayed at an inn he had stayed at before, and told the innkeeper about what had happened. Just as they were exclaiming over the matter, a man carrying a pack suddenly came in to spend the night. His eye was severely wounded—it seemed unbearable—yet his speech was clear. When he heard what Wang had to say, he said, “What an extraordinary thing! How about letting me see the document?”
Just as Wang was about to take it out, the innkeeper noticed that the man with the wounded eye had a tail hanging out below the chair, and said to Wang, “He’s a fox!” Wang hurriedly stuck the document in his shirt and felt for his knife with his hand to drive it away, but the stranger turned into a fox and fled.
After the first watch (roughly between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.), someone knocked at the door again. Wang said uneasily, “Come back again after this and I’ll fight you off with my knife and arrow.”
From the other side of the door, the man said, “If you don’t give me my document back, don’t regret it later.” After that Wang heard nothing more.” (Ditter et al. 93-94)
Suddenly, Wang hears news that his mother has passed away. He quickly sells their family business in the city to pay for funeral expenses, but when he returns to his hometown he finds his mother alive and well, and has sold the other half of their family business, apparently upon Wang’s request.
“Wang took out the deathbed note his mother had sent: now it was just a sheet of blank paper. His mother then said, “The reason I’ve come here is that last month I received your letter saying that you’d recently received a post, and directing me to sell all our property in Jiangdong to cover expenses for going to the capital. Now we’ve got no home to return to.” When his mother took out the letter Scholar Wang had sent, it too- was-nothing more than a blank sheet.” (Ditter et al. 95)
The fox spirit tricked the Wang family into selling all of their assets for a lesser price. According to Stevens, “fox spirits were generally thought to be the cause of any business failure” (155). Similar to the female fox, the male fox is notorious for extreme escalation in pursuit of selfish goals. In one sense, both foxes punish amoral behaviour- the man who steals, the man who cannot control his sexual impulse -but in another, the punishment is also amoral! As one man lectures his friend after betraying a fox’s trust, “from this you can see that the fox was humanlike, whereas you had the appearance of a person but in fact were a fox” (Cogswell 38). Similarly to their female counterparts, male foxes function as a reflection of the sexual dominance of men. Additionally, vindictive plots between fox and human men evidence the patriarchal in-fighting masculine superiority necessitates.
In the present day, the male fox performs a similar allegorical function as the female fox. It is a figure of extortion, trickery, with a hatred of prostitutes and the desire to totally dominate others. A caricature of masculinity, a caricature of man. Both literally and narratively imitative. Overall, the similarities and differences between male and female foxes reflect existing gender stereotypes, while pushing the agenda that men possessing women aligns with the natural order.
In conclusion, the sexual mythology of late imperial Huli Jing narratives mimic real life gender relations and the anxieties of scholars and elites over female sexuality. These fears engendered social and legal policy surrounding intimacy, strictly controlling the power struggle between the sexes and enforcing male superiority. Starkly contrasting the original divine roots of fox mythology, by the Qing dynasty fox-adjacent women came to represent all the socially unclean phenomena the highly traditionalist government intended to suppress.
Despite associations with wealth and prowess, Huli Jing are ultimately regarded as fickle creatures. They luxuriate in their freedom from traditional mythological categories, and exploit their supernatural powers to achieve their own ends. In the Chinese mythological ecosystem, Huli Jing serve as an important bridge between the living and the dead. Their retaliation remains small-scale, indicative of interpersonal and social norms rather than larger malevolent political or economic forces.
Imitation and deception is the Huli Jing’s domain, and despite their inherent lack of conformity their stories invite readers into private exploits of formula. The fox spirit mythos stands as a fictional history, then, of gendered relations in ancient China. It is a necessary element to understanding contemporary Chinese views on sexuality, gender, and feminist politics. In a perplexing dichotomy, the Huli Jing is a representative of deviance, but affirms the social construct and pedagogically encourages self-restraint.
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