The Fox Wife

Bao, a self-made detective, is summoned to a popular restaurant where a woman’s frozen body was found in an alley nearby. The owner has moved the body for fear that his restaurant’s reputation will be ruined. However, he asks Bao to uncover the woman’s name to lay her spirit to rest. Bao has the ability to detect lies. He collects what little information he can about the woman: that she was wearing the clothing that nightly entertainers wear and that she was smiling when they found her. The owner’s wife believes that the woman’s death is the work of a fox. Bao is intrigued, as he’s always had a deep interest in foxes.

On a whim, Snow buys two geese from a merchant in Dalian. She recalls her child’s death and the photographer Bektu Nikan, the man who killed her. She is approached by a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Huang, and her maidservant. They invite her to work for their house, the Huang medicine house, as a caretaker for Mrs. Huang’s mother-in-law. Coincidentally, the young master of the house has an interest in photography. Snow agrees, believing that she might find a clue about Bektu through him. When she meets her charge, the old woman deduces that she’s not quite human.

During Bao’s sickly childhood, he had a nanny who took care of him. To cure him, she prayed to the fox god to have something of his removed. Bao cannot remember what it was. Ever since, however, he has been able to hear lies. In the present, he ponders over the dead woman. He visits the red-light district, suspecting that she might have belonged to a brothel. A bookkeeper tells him that two women have disappeared. As they talk, Bao asks if anyone is asking around about foxes. The bookkeeper tells him to talk to Bektu Nikan, who was looking for a white fox skin at the time.

A fox’s appearance can elicit strong emotions. Snow fears that she has affected the old woman and then realizes that the old woman has encountered a fox before. The old woman asks about Snow’s hometown and verifies that Snow has a shadow. As she states, not everyone has one, and those who don’t are usually spirits. Snow finds out that there is an alleged curse on the Huang house that causes the firstborn male heir to die if a second son is born. After gaining the old woman’s approval, Mrs. Huang renames Snow as Ah San, or “Number Three.” The novel calls the old woman Snow’s “old lady.”

After his nanny prayed to the fox god, Bao became violently ill. Feverish, he could hear lies when his mother tried to reassure him that he would survive. Days later, when the fever broke, he tested the limits of his newfound power on his nanny.

In the present, Bao goes to the Phoenix Pavilion to speak with Qiulan, a brothel worker. He asks her about any missing girls. She tells him of Chunhua, who disappeared during a certain Mr. Wang’s party at a teahouse. Chunhua came from Wu Village, was tricked by a pimp with a good-looking face and false promises of love, and was too ashamed to contact her family for help.

Snow, her old lady, and Bohai go to a photography studio owned by a Japanese man named Oda. When they arrive, Bohai asks after a mutual Japanese friend named Shirakawa. The name makes Snow suspicious. Oda tells them of another death in the neighborhood—this time, a young student. When they return to the house, Snow’s old lady comments on Snow’s knowledge of Japanese and asks her to keep an eye on Shirakawa, whom she invited as part of a small dinner that evening for her grandson and his friends Lu and Chen. Shirakawa is late to the party, so Snow listens in on their conversation. Lu mentions Bektu Nikan, who had worked for Chen’s uncle, and how he’d recently moved abroad to Yokohama, Japan. Snow is distracted with planning how to pursue her daughter’s murderer when Shirakawa arrives. When she sees him, she recognizes him instantly as Shiro, an old acquaintance and fellow fox.

Bao revisits the area near the restaurant. He finds a witness in a small servant boy who had seen the woman with a handsome gentleman before she died. The boy believes that the man was a fox because he felt called by the man, even beyond the door from which he was spying on them.

In his childhood, Bao discovered that his ability to detect lies also applied to himself; if he lied too much, it hurt his mouth. A month after he recovered from his illness, he discovered that his nanny was gone, and no one would tell him why. Instead, his mother arranged a playmate for him—their neighbor’s Mongolian concubine’s daughter, Tagtaa. Initially, Bao ignored her and stayed in his room while she waited outside for him. Eventually, his curiosity won out, and he began speaking with her. When he told her to leave and that he didn’t want to play with her, he felt the lie on his tongue.

Snow’s old lady directs her to serve Bohai and his friends. As Snow stands behind the four men, Lu and Chen touch her subtly but inappropriately. Snow removes herself to be directly behind Bohai and Shiro and overhears their conversation: Bohai admits to feeling ill and says that being near Shiro makes him feel better. When Chen takes an interest in their conversation, Shiro distracts them with a tale about foxes. This angers Snow, as there is an innate rule for foxes to not talk about foxes. Lu, however, interrupts Shiro’s story and tells a tale about a male fox who gets trapped in a bottle and boiled alive. Furious, Shiro tells a tale about a certain Lu household that has all the hallmarks of Lu’s great-grandfather’s old house in Caozhou. He implies that Lu’s great-grandmother had an affair with a fox and that his great-grandfather discovered their affair, bought gunpowder, and killed the fox and all his extended family. Snow recognizes the tale as a modified version of “The King of the Nine Mountains.” Sensing growing tension, she spills red bean soup on Shiro. In the chaos, Snow’s old lady takes her away and thanks her for putting a stop to the evening. Later, Snow sets off to find Shiro.

Bao resolves to find Bektu Nikan. He took a group photograph of the women at the Phoenix Pavilion, including Chunhua.

Bektu is on the run from debt collectors and nowhere to be found. When Bao questions Bektu’s property’s owner, he says that Bektu would often boast about being acquainted with rich men’s sons and being Mr. Wang’s personal photographer—the same man who allegedly hired Chunhua before her disappearance and kept women locked up in his private villa.

Bao leaves for the villa. On the way, he sees a sparrow that reminds him of Tagtaa. He remembers how she told him that she once met a fox when she was small.

Snow chases after Shiro to Oda’s house, where she climbs up a wisteria vine into a bedroom. She runs into Oda, who is inebriated. Snow convinces Oda that she is looking for Shiro, and Oda tries to force himself on her. Shiro interrupts and brings Snow to his room. She ignores his flirtations and questions him about his connection to Bohai and the others. He gives her a vague answer about being Bohai’s friend and protecting him from ghosts. Snow asks about Bektu, and Shiro confirms that he’s on his way to Japan—as he is himself. Snow falls asleep and dreams of her baby. When she wakes, Shiro asks why she isn’t asking about “Black,” or Kuro. She avoids the questions and runs back home.

In the morning, Bao senses that his end is near. He arrives at Mr. Wang’s villa, where he’s arranged to work as a gardener. He meets with one of the maids, as he believes that Bektu Nikan might be hiding in the villa. The maid confirms that Bektu left a month ago and that Chunhua is not the kind of woman Mr. Wang “keeps.” When Bao inquires further, the maid shows him the secret courtyard, where wooden boxes that look like coffins enclose Chinese opera costumes. He inquires about the women. One was an opera singer who escaped with the help of her troupe, another was a woman who died of fever, and the third managed to escape from a locked room one night. The third woman had also been looking for Bektu.

Snow’s old lady is waiting for her when she returns, and Snow tells her of Shiro’s plan to leave for Japan. The next morning, Bohai’s friend Chen comes to the house and asks Snow to work for his aunt. Snow guesses that she would be servicing him instead and refuses. Shiro comes over that evening and asks Snow’s old lady to sell her to him. Snow is not indentured and refuses, but Shiro offers her passage to Japan—and thus to Bektu. Bohai, who is meant to return to Japan for his medical studies, is overjoyed that Shiro will be accompanying him. His grandmother decides to go to Japan with them. Bohai is confused as to why she would want to accompany him, and his mother is equally distraught. His father, however, seems unsurprised. Later, Bohai’s grandmother tells Snow that she intends to protect Bohai from the curse that kills the firstborn son in her family.

Bao questions the maid further about the woman who disappeared from a locked room. Mr. Wang locked her in the room every night, and she escaped a month earlier when he was away at the main house. Puzzled but intrigued, Bao knows that this woman is not Chunhua. He asks about Bektu Nikan’s known haunts, and the maid points him to Wu Village, Chunhua’s home village. The maid asks for his business card before he leaves.

In Bao’s childhood, he built a shrine with Tagtaa. She told him of the time she met a fox when she was a child. She’d been visiting relatives in Inner Mongolia and had gotten lost during a picnic in the grasslands. A black fox found her and directed her home, but because she had twisted her ankle, she could not follow for long. A man whom she believed to be the fox came to retrieve her and carried her to her family on his back. Bao persistently doubted her and was troubled when she called the man “very handsome.”

Snow doesn’t believe in curses. However, she listens as her old lady explains how there were rumors that a bargain was made by the founder of the medicine shop. From then on, every generation had two sons and a daughter, and in every generation, the firstborn son died before the age of 24, and the second one inherited. When Snow’s old lady married into the family, her much older husband had a son from his first wife and a daughter from his third wife. Since Snow’s old lady and her stepson were only eight years apart in age, they grew very close. When she became pregnant, however, the boy became anxious. He knew that his death was near when he began to see the people with no shadows. Snow’s old lady wished for a girl but gave birth to a son and was sick for a week afterward.

Growing tired, Snow’s old lady promises Snow that she’ll tell the rest of the story another day.

For the last leg of his journey, Bao hires a rickshaw driver to bring him to Wu Village. The driver tells him that he’s met Bektu and confirms that Bektu is no longer in the village because of his debt collectors. He also confirms that the daughter of the second-hand cloth dealer left the village and never returned.

Bao meets with Chunhua’s family. Her parents refuse to believe that their daughter worked in the pleasure district and died. As Bao leaves, he overhears the husband blame their misfortune on a fox. Their second daughter, Ah Yan, finds Bao and tells him about how Chunhua had wanted to leave the village because of an arranged marriage and fell for an ill-intended peddler with whom she ran away. Their father blames Ah Yan for Chunhua’s disappearance. In exchange for a photograph of Chunhua, he let Ah Yan keep a white fox cub whom he had ordered Jiang, the local hunter, to hunt for him. He and Jiang had broken its legs, and Ah Yan had tried to nurse it to health. A woman came and implored Ah Yan to give her back the white fox. She believes that the woman was a fox spirit. She tells Bao that Jiang died soon after the incident.