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Main : Chinese : Quotations

Quotations on the Nature of
Chinese Foxes

Foxes have been part of China's cosmology for 2300 years. These quotations are drawn from the broadest range of sources I could find.

When a fox is fifty years old, it can transform itself into a woman. When it is one hundred, it becomes a beautiful woman or a shaman; some become men and have sex with women. They can know events from more than a thousand li away and are good at witchcraft, beguiling people and making them lose their senses. When they are a thousand years old, they can commune with the heavens and become heavenly foxes.

Guo Pu, 276-324, Records from Within the Recondite

Foxes hide all day and run around all night. Foxes love women's chambers, and when women in the capital have their period, they throw their dirty rags in the gutter, and the foxes come and lick up all the menstrual blood. No one sees them. This is probably the reason they turn into monsters. Since southerners don't do this [throw menstrual rags in the street], foxes are rare in the south. The old figure of speech, "In the south there are no wild foxes, in the north there are no cuckoos," is not an unfounded fabrication.

Qian Xiyan, 1613, in The Garden of Cleverness

Those [fox-spirits] who seek alchemical transformations and try to gather spiritual essences are like scholars who attain fame by studying diligently. Those who entice men and deplete them of their sexual energies for their own benefit are taking short-cuts to achieve their goal quickly. But only [the former] can roam the islands of the immortals and ascend to the celestial realms; [the latter], by bringing harm to too many lives, often violate the code of Heaven.

Ji Yun, 1789, in Notebook from the Thatched Cottage of Close Scrutiny

Humans and beasts are different species, but foxes are between humans and beasts. The dead and the living walk different roads, but foxes are between the dead and the living. Transcendents and monsters travel different paths, but foxes are between transcendents and monsters. Therefore one could say to meet a fox is strange; one could also say it is ordinary.

Human beings and physical objects belong to two different categories; fox-spirits stand somewhere between the two. The paths of light and darkness never converge: fox-spirits stand somewhere between the two. Immortals and demons go different ways; fox-spirits stand somewhere between the two.

Ji Yun, 1789, in Notebook from the Thatched Cottage of Close Scrutiny

Some say that when the yelping kind [of fox] are old, they become monsters. they wear a dry skull on their heads, clothe themselves with oak leaves, and assume a human guise. These creatures do harm in countless ways. People set fire to the mountains and dig up their burrows, grasping arrows and driving their hounds, thinking if fox kind is eradicated, monstrosity will cease.

They do not know that although foxes can become monsters, they do not necessarily do so. Once in a while one becomes a monster, but they do not all become monsters. ...

Some say that those who get old and become monsters are called pi foxes or "spirit" foxes. They look like cats and are black. There are a lot of them in the north. They are probably another variety.

He Bang'e, 1791, in Occasional Records of Conversations at Night

Quotations on the Nature of Chinese Foxes

Quotations on the Nature of
Chinese Foxes