When he returned home that morning, his father asked him where he had been all night.

'I spent the night at uncle's,' he lied.

Later that day, he went with his father to market, where he saw a fox's tail hanging in the hat shop and begged his father to buy it for him. His father would not, but the boy clung to his father's coat and after much wheedling talked him into making the purchase. The father was busy in the market, and the boy played around at his side. Then, when his father was not looking, he surreptitiously helped himself to some of his father's money and went off to buy a bottle of liquor with it, which he left behind in the shop, saying he would collect it later. His uncle on his mother's side a hunter by profession lived in town, and the boy hurried to his house, only to find the uncle out. His aunt asked how the boy's mother was.

'She's getting better, gradually,' he replied. 'But she's very upset by the way the rats keep nibbling at her clothes. She sent me to ask you if you have any rat poison.'

The aunt looked in her cupboard and took out about an ounce of poison, which she wrapped in a piece of paper and gave him. He thought this too small an amount for his purpose, so while she went out to make him a bowl of dumpling soup, he helped himself to another handful of the poison and slipped it into his pocket. Then he hurried in to tell his aunt not to bother cooking for him after all, as he had to go back and join his father in the market. He went off and secretly mixed the poison in with the liquor he had left behind in the shop, then loafed about in the market and finally made his way home in the evening. His father (who had left the market long before) asked where he had been all this time, and he said (truthfully this time) that he had called in at his uncle's.

From then on, he made a point of frequenting the market daily, until one day he spotted the long-bearded servant in the crowd. Marking him closely, he trailed him and eventually struck up a conversation with him, asking him where he was from.

'North Village,' was the man's reply. 'And yourself?'

'Oh, I'm from a cave in the hills,' said the boy.

Long Beard found his answer strange.

'We've lived in a cave for generations,' the boy continued. 'Haven't you too?'

Long Beard found this stranger still. He asked the boy his name.

'Hu,' he replied, which meant 'Fox'. 'Actually I was at the Ho garden the other day, and saw you with the other two. Don't you remember?'

Long Beard studied him a moment. He was almost ready to believe him, but not quite. Then the boy half-unbuttoned the lower part of his gown, enough to reveal a portion of his false tail.

'After all these years of living with men, I still can't do anything about this!'

'What are you doing here in the market?'

'My father sent me here to buy some liquor.'

Long Beard replied that he had come for the same purpose.

'And have you bought yours yet?' asked the boy.

'We are poor folk,' he replied. 'Usually I have to steal rather than buy.'

'That must be tricky,' said the boy. 'I'd be scared to steal.'

'My master sent me on this errand, so I have to go through with it,' said Long Beard.

'And who is your master?'

'I serve those two gentlemen you saw the other day. They are brothers. One of them is having an affair with the wife of a Mr Wang in North Village; the other is carrying on with the wife of an older man, a merchant from East Village. The merchant's son is a real villain! He chopped off part of my master's tail and it's taken all of ten days to heal. Today my master has plans to pay his lady friend another visit.'

With this, Long Beard took his leave. 'I must go and see to my business.'

'Stealing must be so much trouble,' objected the boy. 'It's much easier to buy. I've already bought some liquor, as a matter of fact; I've got it laid by in the shop. Why don't I make you a present of it? I still have some money left; I can easily buy myself some more.'

Long Beard protested that he would be unable to pay him back.

'Come, we belong to the same kind. Think nothing of it. Sometime when you are free we must get together for a drink.'

They set off together. When they reached the shop, he gave Long Beard the liquor, and then went home.

That night, his mother slept undisturbed and did not feel her usual urge to go rushing off to her separate room. The boy sensed that something must have happened. In the morning, he told his father part of the story, and the two of them went next door to the Ho garden, where they found two foxes lying dead in a pavilion and a third dead in the long grass. Blood was still trickling from their mouths. The liquor bottle was there, and when they shook it they found it was not empty. The merchant was greatly astonished when his son finally told him the whole story.

'Why did you not tell me about this earlier?' he asked.

'Foxes are such canny creatures,' replied the boy wisely. 'I had to keep it a secret or they would have found out.'

The merchant seemed extremely pleased with his son. 'When it comes to catching foxes,' he exclaimed, 'you are as crafty as Chen Ping!'

Father and son carried the foxes home. One of them was missing a chunk of its tail, and the scar (from the chopper wound) was clearly visible.

From that time on, they were all left in peace. The merchant's wife, although her mind gradually returned to normal, lost a great deal of weight. She developed a serious cough and brought up large quantities of phlegm, before finally making a good recovery.

Over in North Village, the wife of Mr Wang, who had been possessed by the other fox, was, they discovered, also freed from her entanglements and she, too, made a complete recovery.

After this the merchant treasured his son more than ever. He taught him to ride and draw the bow, and in later life the boy rose to be a high-ranking military officer.

36.

A PASSION FOR SNAKES.

Wang Puling, a man of my home town of Zichuan, had a servant by the name of Lu Fengning, who had a passion for eating snakes. If he came upon a very small one, he munched it up whole and swallowed it like a spring onion. Larger ones he cut up into small pieces and ate with his hands, crunching them up loudly and vigorously, and letting the blood dribble all over his chin.

He had a very keen sense of smell. Once he sniffed out a snake through a wall and went rushing out to catch it. It was over a foot long. He had no knife with him at the time, so he bit into its head and ate it with the tail dangling and wriggling from his mouth.

37.

A LATTER-DAY BUDDHA.

Jin Shicheng, of Changshan, was all his life a man of extremes. He suddenly left home one day to become a dhuta, and wandered around like a crazy mendicant eating filth as if it were a delicacy. If he saw sheep droppings or dog excrement on the road in front of him, he would go down on all fours and start munching. He referred to himself as a Living Buddha, and attracted thousands of disciples from among the ignorant locals, men and women alike, who marvelled at his behaviour. If he ordered them to eat excrement by way of penance, not one of them dared disobey. So generous were the contributions that came his way, he was able to spend a fortune on the construction of lavish temple buildings.

The local Magistrate, Judge Nan, took exception to his strange ways, had him arrested and flogged, and ordered him to pay for repairs to the Confucian temple. Jin's disciples said one to another, 'Our Buddha is in trouble!' Contributions came pouring in, and the repairs were completed in less than a month. Far more money was raised than if some harsh magistrate had tried to extort it in the usual way.

38.

FOX ENCHANTMENT.

Dong Xiasi was a young gentleman who lived in the westernmost part of Qingzhou prefecture. One winter evening, he spread the bedding on his couch, lit a good fire in the brazier and was just trimming his lamp when a friend called by to haul him off for a drink. He bolted his door and off they went.

Among the guests at his friend's house was a physician well-versed in the arcane art of fortune-telling known as the Tai Su, or Primordial, Method, performed by reading the pulse. The physician was demonstrating this skill of his for the benefit of all the guests present, and finally came to Dong and to another friend of his, by the name of Wang Jiusi.

'I have read many pulses in my time,' he pronounced. 'But you two gentlemen have the strangest and most contradictory configurations I have ever encountered. One of you shows Long Life, side by side with contraindications of Premature Demise; the other one shows Prosperity, but with contraindications of Poverty. Strange indeed! And quite beyond my competence, I fear. Yours, sir,' he said, turning to Dong, 'is the more extreme of the two.'

The two men were appalled, and requested some elucidation.

'I fear this has taken me to the very limit of my art. I simply can go no further. I can only beg you both to exercise the utmost caution.'

At first they were greatly distressed by the learned physician's remarks. But then they reflected on the almost too-carefully worded ambivalence of his prognosis and decided not to pay it undue attention.

Dong returned home late that same night and was exceedingly surprised to find the door to his study standing ajar. He Caption

The physician was demonstrating this skill of his.

had drunk a great deal, and in his inebriated state he concluded that he must have forgotten to bolt the door earlier that evening. He had after all set off in rather a hurry. In he went and, without bothering to light the lamp, reached under the covers, to feel if there was any warmth left in the bed. His hand encountered the soft skin of a sleeping body, and he withdrew it in some trepidation. Hurriedly lighting the lamp, he beheld a young girl of extraordinary beauty lying there in his bed, and stood for a moment ecstatically contemplating her ethereal features. Then he began to caress her and fondle her body, allowing his hand to stray to her nether regions, where to his great alarm he encountered a long bushy tail. His attempt to effect a speedy escape was cut short by the girl, who was now wide awake and seized hold of him by the arm.

'Where are you going, sir?'

Dong stood there trembling in fear. 'Madam Fairy,' he pleaded with her, 'I beseech you, have mercy!'

'What have you seen to make you so afraid of me?' said the girl, with a smile.

'It wasn't your face...' Dong stammered. 'It was your tail.'

She laughed. 'What tail? You must have made some mistake.'

She guided Dong's hand down beneath the covers again, drawing it across the firm, smooth flesh of her buttocks, and resting it gently on the tip of her backbone, which this time was indeed quite hairless to the touch.

'See!' she said, smiling more sweetly than ever. 'You were just tipsy and letting your imagination run away with you. You really shouldn't say such unkind things.'

Dong drank in her beauty with his eyes, by now totally spellbound and greatly regretting his initial misgivings though he still found himself vaguely wondering what she was doing in his room and in his bed. She seemed to divine his thoughts.

'Don't you remember the girl next door, with the brown hair? It must be ten years now since my family moved away. I was no more than a child then, and you were just a little boy.'

'Ah Suo!' cried Dong as the memory returned to him. 'You mean the Zhous' little girl!'

'That's right.'

'I do remember you! What a beautiful young lady you have become! But what are you doing here, in my bed?'

'For five long years I was wife to a simpleton. Both my parents-in-law passed away, and then my husband died, leaving me a widow and quite alone in the world. I thought of you, my childhood friend, and came here to seek you out. When I arrived it was already evening, and a moment later your friend called and invited you out, so I looked for a place where I could hide and wait for you to return. You were such a very long time, and I was beginning to shiver with cold, so I crept under your quilt to keep myself warm. You don't mind, do you?'

Ecstatically Dong stripped off his clothes and climbed under the quilt with her. His subsequent joy can well be imagined.

A month went by, and gradually Dong began to waste away. His family commented on his worsening condition, and expressed their concern, which he dismissed as groundless. But with time his features grew quite haggard and he himself began to take fright. He went to consult the same learned physician, who took his pulses again and declared, 'You are clearly bewitched. My earlier prognosis of Premature Demise has been borne out. I fear there is no cure for you.'

Dong burst into tears and refused to leave the physician, who performed acupuncture on his hand and moxibustion on his navel, and gave him certain herbal remedies to take.

'If anything untoward should cross your path, be sure to resist it with all your might.'

Dong went away fearing for his life.

When he reached home, the girl greeted him with sweet smiles and wanted him in bed with her at once. He protested vehemently, 'Leave me alone! Can't you see I am at death's door!'

He turned his back on her.

'Do you really think you can still live?' she cried bitterly, shame and anger mingling in her voice.

That night, Dong took his medicine and slept alone, but the moment he closed his eyes in sleep, he dreamed he was making love to the girl again, and when he awoke he found that he had ejaculated in his bed. He grew more afraid than ever, and went in to sleep with his wife, who lit a lamp and kept a close watch over him. Still the dreams continued, and yet every time he awoke the girl was nowhere to be seen. A few days later, he began to cough up large quantities of blood, and before long he was dead.

Now some while after this, Wang (the friend whose fortune had also been told on that fateful evening) was sitting in his own study one day when a young girl entered unannounced. He was immediately taken with her beauty, and made love to her without further ado. He asked her who she was and where she was from.