Sang Xiao, styled Ziming, was a man of Yizhou. Orphaned young, he took lodgings at Honghuabu. Sang was quiet and reserved by nature, and content with his own company. Twice a day he went out to eat at his neighbour’s to the east; the rest of the time he simply sat at home and stayed put. One day the scholar next door dropped in and said in jest, “Living all alone like this, aren’t you afraid of ghosts and foxes?” Sang laughed. “What has a grown man to fear from ghosts and foxes? If a male one comes, I have a sharp sword. If it’s a female, I’ll open the door and let her in.” The neighbour went home and laid a plan with his friends. They put a ladder against the wall and got a prostitute over it, and she tapped on Sang’s door with her fingers. Sang peeped out and asked who was there. The woman said she was a ghost. Sang was terrified; his teeth chattered so that you could hear them. The woman hung about a while and then went away. Early next morning the neighbour came to Sang’s study. Sang told him what he had seen, and said he meant to go home. The neighbour clapped his hands. “Why didn’t you open the door and let her in?” At once Sang saw that it had been a trick, and he went on living there in peace as before.

Half a year went by. One night a woman came knocking at the study. Sang thought it was his friends playing the same trick again. He opened the door and asked her in — and she was a beauty fit to topple a kingdom. Astonished, he asked where she had come from. “My name is Lianxiang,” she said. “I’m a courtesan from the house to the west.” There had always been plenty of pleasure houses in the town, so he believed her. They put out the candle and went to bed, and nothing could have been more tender. After that she came every third or fifth night.

One evening, as he sat alone lost in thought, a girl came drifting lightly in. Sang took her for Lianxiang and went to meet her, talking as he went. But face to face, it was someone else. She was only fifteen or sixteen, with sleeves hanging loose and her hair falling unbound like a young girl’s; graceful and lovely, and as she moved she seemed to be coming and going at once. Sang was dumbfounded and suspected she was a fox. “I am a girl of good family,” she said. “My surname is Li. I admire your fine and noble bearing, and I hope you will look kindly on me.” Sang was pleased. He took her hand; it was as cold as ice. “Why are you so cold?” he asked. “I have always been frail and thin-blooded,” she said, “and I have come through the frost and dew of the night. How could I not be?” Then her silk jacket was unfastened, and she was plainly a virgin. “For love’s sake,” she said, “my tender maidenhood is lost in a single night. If you do not scorn me as a plain and lowly thing, I would like to share your pillow always. Is there anyone else who comes to your room?” “No one,” said Sang. “Only a courtesan from next door, and she doesn’t come often.” “Then I must take care to keep out of her way,” said the girl. “I am not like the women of those houses. Keep it secret, tell no one. When she comes, I go; when she goes, I come. That will do.”

At cockcrow she rose to leave. She gave him an embroidered slipper1. “This is something I wear down below,” she said. “Play with it, and it will carry your longing to me. But when anyone is about, take care not to play with it!” He took it and looked at it: tiny and pointed, turned up at the tip like an awl for picking knots. He was enchanted with it. The next evening, when no one was about, he took it out to look at and fondle. All at once the girl came floating in, and they made love. From then on, whenever he took out the slipper, she was sure to come at the thought. He wondered at it and asked her. She laughed. “It just happens to be the right time.”

One night Lianxiang came and said in alarm, “Why do you look so drained, my love?” “I hadn’t noticed,” said Sang. Lianxiang took her leave, promising to come again in ten days. After she had gone, Li came every night without fail. “Why hasn’t your sweetheart been for so long?” she asked. So he told her of the ten-day arrangement. Li laughed. “How do I compare with Lianxiang for beauty?” “You are both perfect, each in her own way,” said Sang. “But Lianxiang’s skin is warm.” Li’s face changed. “You call us equally lovely because you are talking to me. She must be an immortal from the palace in the moon, and I am surely no match for her.” And she was unhappy. Then she counted on her fingers: the ten days were up. She told him not to let it out, for she meant to steal a look at her.

The next night Lianxiang came as promised, laughing and talking merrily. But when they went to bed she cried out in alarm. “This is dangerous! I haven’t seen you for ten days — how have you grown so much more worn out? Are you sure you haven’t met anyone else?” Sang asked her why she said so. “I can tell from your spirit and breath,” she said. “Your pulse is scattered like tangled silk. It’s a ghost sickness.” The next night Li came. “You saw Lianxiang — what is she like?” Sang asked. “Beautiful,” she said. “I always said there was no such beauty in the world, and sure enough, she is a fox. When she left, I followed her. She lives in a hole in the southern hills.” Sang suspected she was jealous, and gave a vague answer.

The evening after, he teased Lianxiang. “I don’t believe it myself, but someone says you’re a fox.” “Who said so?” Lianxiang demanded at once. Sang laughed. “I was only teasing you.” “And how is a fox different from a person?” said Lianxiang. “Whoever a fox bewitches falls sick, and at worst he dies. That’s why they are to be feared.” “Not so,” said Lianxiang. “At your age, three days after making love a man’s essence2 is restored. Even if I were a fox, what harm would it do? But if you hack away at it morning after morning, there are human beings worse than any fox. All the consumptive corpses and wasted ghosts in the world — did every one of them die of a fox’s spell? Still, someone must have been talking about me.” Sang protested hard that no one had; Lianxiang pressed him harder still. In the end he had no choice and let it out. “I did wonder why you were so worn out,” said Lianxiang. “But how could it come to this so quickly? Could she be something not human? Say nothing. Tomorrow night I will spy on her the way she spied on me.” That night Li came. She had said only two or three words when a cough sounded outside the window, and she fled at once. Lianxiang came in. “You are in danger! She really is a ghost! If you dote on her beauty and don’t break with her at once, your road to the underworld is short!” Sang thought she was jealous and said nothing. “I know you can’t give her up,” said Lianxiang. “But I can’t bear to watch you die. Tomorrow I will bring medicine to drive the yin poison out of you. Luckily the root of the sickness is still shallow. In ten days you should be well. Let me share your bed until I see you cured.” The next night she did bring out a little spoonful of medicine and fed it to him. Within moments he had purged two or three times, and felt his insides cleansed and emptied and his spirits suddenly clear. Though he was grateful to her in his heart, he still could not believe that Li was a ghost.

Night after night Lianxiang lay beside him under the same quilt, but whenever he wanted to make love she stopped him. After some days his flesh had filled out again. When she was ready to leave, she urged him earnestly to break with Li. Sang pretended to agree. But as soon as he had shut the door and trimmed the lamp, he took out the slipper and was lost in longing. Li suddenly appeared. After several days apart, she looked rather resentful. “She has been playing doctor and shaman to me night after night,” said Sang. “Please don’t hold it against her. My heart is with you.” Li brightened a little. On the pillow Sang whispered, “I love you so much, and yet someone says you are a ghost.” Li was tongue-tied for a long while. Then she cursed. “It must be that lewd fox filling your ears! If you don’t break with her, I won’t come any more!” And she began to sob quietly. Sang soothed her with a hundred words before she stopped. Two nights later Lianxiang came. She knew that Li had been back, and said angrily, “Are you set on dying?” Sang laughed. “Why are you so terribly jealous?” Lianxiang grew angrier still. “You have planted the root of death, and I am digging it out for you. What would someone who isn’t jealous do instead?” Sang made something up to tease her. “She says my illness the other day was the work of a fox.” Lianxiang sighed. “If it is as you say, and you are too far gone to see sense — if the worst should happen, how could I clear myself even with a hundred mouths? Let me take my leave of you from now on. In a hundred days I will come and see you on your sickbed.” He begged her to stay, but she would not; she left in a huff. From then on Li was with him from dusk to dawn. After some two months he felt utterly exhausted. At first he still made light of it; but he grew thinner by the day, and could take only a bowl of thin gruel. He wanted to go home to be looked after, but was still too infatuated to bear leaving at once. He put it off a few days, until he was bedridden and could not get up again. The scholar next door saw how ill he was and sent the servant boy every day with food and drink. Only now did Sang suspect Li. “I wish I had listened to Lianxiang,” he said to her. “It has brought me to this!” With that he closed his eyes. After a while he came round again, opened his eyes and looked about him: Li had gone. From then on she never came again.

Sang lay wasted in his empty study, longing for Lianxiang as a farmer longs for harvest. One day, as he lay lost in thought, someone lifted the curtain and came in. It was Lianxiang. She came up to the bed and smiled. “You country bumpkin, was I talking nonsense?” Sang choked with sobs for a long while. He said he knew he had done wrong, and begged her only to save him. “The sickness has gone too deep,” said Lianxiang. “There is truly no cure. I have only come to say goodbye for ever, and to show you I was not jealous.” In great grief Sang said, “There is something under my pillow. Please break it to pieces for me.” Lianxiang searched and found the slipper. She took it over to the lamp and turned it this way and that, looking it over. Suddenly Li came in. Catching sight of Lianxiang, she turned to flee. Lianxiang blocked the door with her body, and Li, cornered, did not know how to get out. Sang reproached her and listed her wrongs; Li could not answer. Lianxiang laughed. “Now at last I can face you, madam, and have it out. You once told him his old illness might well be my doing. What do you say now?” Li bowed her head and owned her fault. “So lovely a girl,” said Lianxiang, “and you turn love into enmity?” Li threw herself on the ground in tears and begged her for pity and help. Lianxiang raised her up and questioned her closely about her life. “I am the daughter of Assistant Prefect3 Li,” she said. “I died young and was buried outside the wall here. I am a spring silkworm4 already dead, but my silk is not all spun. To be his lover was my wish; to bring him to his death was never in my heart.” “I have heard that ghosts want people to die,” said Lianxiang, “so that after death they can be together always. Is it so?” “No,” said Li. “When two ghosts meet there is no joy in it at all. If there were, there are plenty of young men down in the Yellow Springs!” “What a fool you are!” said Lianxiang. “Night after night of it would be too much for a man even with a living woman — let alone with a ghost!” Li asked, “Foxes can kill people too. How is it that your arts alone do not?” “Those are the kind that gather and replenish5,” said Lianxiang. “I am not one of them. So there are foxes in the world that do people no harm, but there is never a ghost that does not, because the yin in them is so strong.” Hearing this, Sang knew for the first time that the fox and the ghost were both real. Luckily he had grown used to them and was not much frightened. But at the thought that his last breath was as thin as a thread, he could not help crying aloud in grief. Lianxiang turned to Li. “What are you going to do about him?” Li blushed and made shamefaced excuses. Lianxiang laughed. “Afraid that once he’s strong and well, the vinegar lady6 will want to eat bayberries?” Li gathered her skirts and curtsied. “If there were a physician of the very highest skill, and I could stop failing him, I would bury my head in the ground — how could I dare show my shameless face in the world of the living again?” Lianxiang opened her bag and took out medicine. “I knew long ago it would come to this. After I left, I gathered herbs on the Three Mountains7. It took me three whole months to get the ingredients together. Give it even to a consumptive on the point of death, and he will revive. But the medicine has to be carried in by whatever brought the sickness on, so I have no choice but to turn to you for help.” “What is needed?” Li asked. “Just a drop of the sweet spittle from your cherry mouth. I’ll put a pill in his mouth, and you must put your lips to his and spit.” A flush spread over Li’s cheeks. She hung her head, turned aside, and looked at her slipper. Lianxiang teased her: “Little sister, the only thing you’re proud of is that slipper!” Li was more abashed than ever; whether she looked up or down, there was nowhere to hide. “You do this all the time,” said Lianxiang. “Why so stingy now?” She put the pill between Sang’s lips and turned to press Li. Li had no choice and spat. “Again!” said Lianxiang. She spat again. After three or four times the pill went down his throat. Soon his belly rumbled like thunder. Lianxiang put in another pill, and this time she put her own lips to his and breathed into him. Sang felt a fiery heat in his cinnabar field, and his spirits blazed up. “He is cured!” said Lianxiang. Li heard the cock crow, lingered uncertainly, and took her leave. Since Sang had only just recovered and still needed nursing, Lianxiang thought it unwise for him to go out for his meals. So she locked the door from the outside, to make it look as though Sang had gone home and put a stop to all visitors, and watched over him day and night. Li too came every evening without fail, attentive and eager to serve, and waited on Lianxiang as she would on an elder sister. Lianxiang, for her part, grew very fond of her. After three months Sang was as strong as ever. Then Li stayed away for several nights; when she did come, she would only glance at them and go. When she was with them she was gloomy and downcast. Lianxiang often asked her to stay and sleep with them, but she always refused. Once Sang ran after her and carried her back in his arms; her body was as light as a straw funeral figure. Unable to escape, she lay down in her clothes, curled up so small she was not two feet long. Lianxiang pitied her all the more, and secretly had Sang take her in his arms; but however he shook her, he could not wake her. Sang fell asleep, and when he woke and felt for her, she was gone. For ten days and more after that she did not come again. Sang longed for her deeply, and often took out the slipper and handled it with Lianxiang. “Lovely as she is,” said Lianxiang, “even I, a woman, can’t help adoring her. How much more a man!” “In the old days,” said Sang, “whenever I played with the slipper she came. I wondered at it, but I never guessed she was a ghost. Now I look at the slipper and think of her face, and it truly breaks my heart.” And he wept.

Some time before this, a rich family named Zhang had a daughter called Yan’er who, at fifteen, had died of a fever without breaking a sweat. In the night she came back to life, got up, looked about her and tried to run off. Zhang barred the door, and she could not get out. The girl said, “I am the soul of the Assistant Prefect’s daughter. Master Sang has loved me so faithfully, and the slipper I left him is still at his place. I am really a ghost. What good will it do to lock me up?” Since there seemed to be something behind her words, they asked her how she had come to be there. She hesitated and looked about her, at a loss to explain it herself. Someone said that Sang had fallen ill and gone home. The girl insisted it was untrue, and the family grew very suspicious. When the scholar next door to Sang heard of it, he climbed over the wall to look, and saw Sang talking face to face with a beauty. He burst in to catch them, but in the confusion she vanished. Shocked, the neighbour questioned him. Sang laughed. “I told you before: a female one I’d let in.” The neighbour told him what Yan’er had said. Sang unbarred his door and wanted to go and find out more, but had no way to do it. When the girl’s mother heard that Sang had not gone home after all, she thought it stranger than ever. So she sent a woman servant to ask for the slipper, and Sang brought it out and handed it over. Yan’er was delighted to have it. She tried it on: the slipper was a good inch smaller than her foot. She was aghast. She took a mirror and looked at herself, and suddenly understood that she had come back to life in a borrowed body. She told them how it had happened, and only then did her mother believe it. The girl looked in the mirror and wept bitterly. “The way I looked before, I could feel fairly sure of myself, and even so, every time I saw Sister Lian I felt ashamed. Now I’ve come to this — I’m worse as a human being than I was as a ghost!” She clutched the slipper and wailed, and nothing anyone said could console her. She pulled the quilt over herself and lay rigid. When they brought her food she would not eat, and her whole body swelled up. For seven days she ate nothing, yet she did not die, and the swelling slowly went down. Then she grew so hungry she could not bear it, and began to eat again. A few days later her whole body began to itch, and all her skin peeled off. When she got up one morning, a sleeping slipper had fallen off, and when she looked for it to put it on, it was enormous. So she tried on the old slipper, and it fitted perfectly. She was overjoyed. She looked in the mirror again: brows, eyes, chin and cheeks were exactly as they had been in life. She was happier still. When she had washed and combed her hair and went to see her mother, everyone who saw her stared. When Lianxiang heard of these strange things, she urged Sang to send a matchmaker; but the gulf between his poverty and their wealth was so wide that he did not dare make a move. Then it happened to be the old lady’s birthday, and Sang went along with her sons and sons-in-law to offer congratulations. Seeing Sang’s name among the guests, the old lady had Yan’er peep through the curtain to pick him out. Sang was the last to arrive. The girl darted out, caught his sleeve and wanted to go home with him. Her mother scolded her, and only then did she go back in, ashamed. Sang looked at her closely: she was exactly the same. Without knowing it he began to weep, and he bowed to the ground and would not get up. The old lady raised him up and did not take it as an insult. Sang left and begged the girl’s uncle to act as go-between. The old lady proposed to choose a lucky day and take Sang into the family as a son-in-law.

Sang went home and told Lianxiang, and talked over with her what to do. Lianxiang was downcast for a long while, then said she would leave him. Sang was shocked and wept. “You are going to hold your wedding in another family’s house,” said Lianxiang. “How could I show my face if I went along with you?” So Sang planned to take Lianxiang back to his home village first, and then bring Yan’er there as his bride, and Lianxiang agreed. Sang told the Zhangs the whole truth. When Zhang heard that he already had a woman in his house, he was angry and reproached him; but Yan’er pleaded hard for him, and in the end Zhang agreed. On the day, Sang went to fetch the bride himself. At home the preparations had been rather hasty and makeshift; but when he came back, the whole way from the gate to the hall was laid with carpets, and hundreds upon thousands of lanterns and candles blazed in rows like brocade. Lianxiang helped the bride into the bridal tent. Once the veil was lifted, the two were as happy together as old friends. Lianxiang kept her company over the wedding cup and asked her all about the strange business of her return to life. “In those days I was so wretched and lost,” said Yan’er. “Just because I was a creature of another kind, I felt myself unclean. After I left you, I was too bitter to go back to my grave, and drifted with the wind. Whenever I saw the living I envied them. By day I clung to the grass and trees; by night I let my feet carry me where they would, rising and sinking. I happened to come to the Zhangs’ house and saw a young girl lying on a bed. I went close and attached myself to her, not knowing that it would bring me back to life.” Lianxiang heard this in silence, as though turning something over in her mind. Two months later Lianxiang gave birth to a son. After the birth she fell suddenly ill and sank from day to day. She clutched Yan’er’s arm. “I dare to burden you with my misbegotten child,” she said. “My son is your son.” Yan’er wept, and comforted her as best she could. She called in healers, but Lianxiang always sent them away. She lay gravely ill, at the very end, her breath hanging by a thread. Sang and Yan’er both wept. Suddenly she opened her eyes. “Don’t! You are happy to live; I am happy to die. If it is meant to be, we will meet again ten years from now.” With these words she died. When they lifted the quilt to lay her in the coffin, the body had turned into a fox. Sang could not bear to treat her differently, and gave her a fine burial. The boy was named Hu’er, Fox Boy, and Yan’er raised him as her own. Every year at the Qingming festival8 she carried him to the grave and wept there.

Later Sang passed the provincial examination, and the family grew gradually well off. But Yan’er, to her sorrow, bore no children. Hu’er was very bright, but frail and often ill. Yan’er kept urging Sang to take a concubine. One day a maid said, “There’s an old woman at the gate with a girl to sell.” Yan’er had them called in. At first sight she cried out in amazement, “Is it Sister Lian come back?” Sang looked at the girl: she was the very image of her, and he too was startled. “How old is she?” he asked. “Fourteen,” said the old woman. “And how much do you want for her?” “She’s the only flesh and blood this old body has,” said the old woman. “If she goes to a good home, and I have somewhere to get a meal, so these old bones won’t end up thrown in a ditch, that’s enough.” Sang paid her well and kept the girl. Yan’er took the girl’s hand and led her into an inner room. Chucking her under the chin, she smiled. “Do you know who I am?” “No,” said the girl. Asked her name, she said, “My surname is Wei. My father sold drinks in Xucheng. He has been dead three years.” Yan’er counted on her fingers and paused to think: it was exactly fourteen years since Lianxiang had died. She looked the girl over again: in face, bearing and manner, there was nothing that was not the living likeness. So she patted the top of her head and called out, “Sister Lian, Sister Lian! You promised we’d meet in ten years — you didn’t lie to me!” Suddenly the girl seemed to wake from a dream. “Oh!” she cried, as if all at once everything were clear, and stared hard at Yan’er. Sang laughed. “This is ‘The swallow that comes back9, as if we’d met before.’” The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, it is. My mother told me that I could talk as soon as I was born. They thought it a bad omen and made me drink dog’s blood, and I lost all memory of my past life. Only today have I woken from the dream. Madam, are you the Li sister who was ashamed to be a ghost?” They talked together of their former lives, and grief and joy came over them at once.

One year at the Cold Food Festival10, Yan’er said, “This is the day every year when you and I go to weep for Sister Lian.” So they went up to the grave together. Rank grass grew thick there, and the trees had grown a full span around. The girl, too, sighed. Yan’er said to Sang, “Sister Lian and I have loved each other through two lifetimes. I cannot bear for us to be parted. Our white bones should lie in the same grave.” Sang did as she said. He opened Li’s grave, took out the bones, carried them home and buried them together with Lianxiang’s. When friends and relatives heard of these strange things, they came to the grave in festive dress; several hundred people gathered there unbidden. In the gengxu year11 I travelled south and came to Yizhou. Held up by rain, I put up at an inn. A scholar there named Liu Zijing, a cousin of Sang’s, brought out a Life of Sang written by Wang Zizhang, a member of his literary society. It ran to some ten thousand words, and I was able to read it through. What I have written here is only its outline.

The Historian of the Strange12 says: Alas! The dead seek life, and the living in turn seek death. What in this world is harder to come by than a human body? Yet how often those who have one simply throw it away — until, brazen-faced, they live on, less than a fox, and die and are blotted out, less than a ghost.