The Fox Wife

“No other creature hobbled its females like this, breaking the arch of a child’s foot at the tender age of four or five and binding it into a hoof.”

Snow’s remarks about the foot-binding tradition in China distinguish the cultural differences between humans and foxes. While Snow and the others may look like they belong among humans, they hold fundamentally different values. Snow’s words—“hobbled,” “breaking”—show her disdain for foot binding.

“Since ancient times, foxes have been feared and revered.”

This points to how humans use superstitions to explain uncomfortable situations or provide reassurance. They are afraid of mystical beings, such as when blaming the mystical for an unfaithful spouse. At the same time, they pray to mystical beings as they would a god, such as for a cure.

“The image of my child’s broken body haunted me.”

The above quote encompasses Snow’s motivation for pursuing Bektu Nikan, which drives the plot. Though she will tell Tagtaa that she is not afraid of ghosts, she is haunted by the ghostly image of her daughter’s death.

“Girls sold to brothels must shoulder the cost of their own imprisonment, to which is added, month on month, the cruel price of interest, room, and board.”

The novel outlines the hellish outcomes for women who end up in brothels. During this era, men seduced young women to sell them to brothels. Choo makes a point of exposing how these institutions have tailored a scheme to make exploitation permanent.

“A corpse is considered a repository of yin, or negative energy, and thus deeply unlucky.”

This passage foreshadows the source of Bao’s lung issues. Bao has been unlucky in love and on his career path to become a local government official. He will discover that this was tied with having too much yin and, as Kuro puts it, being “half-dead.”

“Any name with the written character for ‘white’ in it is immediately suspect to me. As is ‘black,’ for that matter.”

Here, Choo showcases the hidden underworld of the supernatural and how mystical beings manage to remain peripheral to humans. No one would suspect that the colors white and black in names indicate an affiliation with foxes. However, to those who are in the know, they shine like beacons.

“The way we [foxes] live, always of the edge, running along the tops of stone walls and fences. Between civilization and the wilderness.”

This quote highlights The Unstable Identity of Mystical Creatures. As beings caught in the line between the supernatural and human worlds, foxes are liminal in their lifestyles and residences.

“We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better-looking.”

This passage subverts pervasive superstitions about foxes. While humans have one-dimensional ideas about foxes, Snow boldly claims the diversity and complexity of her species.

“There are other names for foxes as well, ranging from ‘hujing’ (fox spirit) to ‘huyao’ (fox demon) to ‘hushen’ (fox god). Just like people, foxes seem to come in all shades of gray.”

Humans adapt narratives about mystical creatures by creating isolated categories of foxes. For a critical thinker like Bao, such variety defies the idea that foxes are single, compartmentalized beings.

“Yet I [Tagtaa] feel that you [Snow] were sent to me. I’ve been waiting for a capable servant like you, to travel with me to protect Bohai.”

Tagtaa’s attachment to Snow, while sweet, gestures to the influence that foxes have on their human connections. Because of her exposure to both Kuro (as a child) and Snow, Tagtaa implicitly trusts Snow and ascribes that trust to divine providence.

“I [Snow] dislike the notion of getting onto a boat as a number. For all I knew, it might be the last record of my existence.”

Choo creates tension about foxes and their legacy. Despite needing to remain anonymous and faceless to humans, Snow does not want to be fully forgotten. Like most sentient creatures, she wants to leave something by which to note her passage in this world.

“A virtuous fox out not to prey on people; it’s precisely this kind of behavior that gets us hunted down and skinned.”

This excerpt points to Shiro’s and Snow’s different perspectives on how a fox should act. While Shiro fully embraces his nature as a trickster and exploits humans, Snow prefers to aspire to nobility and morality.

“‘Feng’ means ‘phoenix,’ while ‘Ah Yan’ means ‘swallow.’ It’s not surprising that siblings would be named after birds, though it’s ironic that Feng ended up at the brothel called the Phoenix Pavilion.”

Choo indicates the irony of Feng’s name. Phoenixes are meant to be reborn to greater strength after their deaths. It is especially tragic that after Feng’s “death” and rebirth as Chunhua, her life was one of pure misery.

“Yet Tagtaa’s hairpin—and her wish—was something that Bao desperately wanted for himself.”

Bao decides to steal Tagtaa’s hairpin. This shows cowardice in his pursuit of love. Though he is jealous of the man who will marry Tagtaa and wants to marry her himself, the most he can do is steal her prayer to the fox god.

“Of course, neither Shiro nor I am Japanese or Chinese or Mongolian. We just happen to resemble such people enough that we can speak their languages and live quietly among them.”

This passage underscores The Unstable Identity of Mystical Creatures. It illustrates how unmoored Snow and the others are. Having no nationality alienates foxes from a purely human invention—that of international boundaries and the concept of national identities. This effectively others them.

“I doubt he [Pu Songling] ever met any of our clan, but thanks to him, foxes and ghosts are linked in the public imagination, though they’re entirely different.”

This passage explores the false literary monolith about foxes, which is that they are linked with ghosts. Snow subverts this, pointing, as the narrative does many times, to the uniqueness of foxes.

“He wonders if the emotion that Mr. Wang feels for his runaway fiancée is anything like the grief Tagtaa’s departure caused him. […] [T]here’s an urgent, sad secrecy that Bao recognizes in his client.”

Like his stealing of Tagtaa’s hairpin, Bao highlights his weaknesses and susceptibilities to love and desire. Infatuation and coveting a person are human feelings that the foxes only exacerbate—they do not necessarily create them by otherworldly means.

“I gave up everything, including the thousand-year journey towards enlightenment I’d once pursued.”

This quote addresses the personal cost to Snow of embarking on a revenge journey. Though she wants to be repaid for her blood debt, it comes at the cost of her ambition for enlightenment and her belief that a fox must be virtuous.

“Mr. Wang’s secret courtyard reminds Bao of unsettling tales of wives or concubines who have been walled up and forgotten. Fed through a slot by uncaring servants for years, they wither away like discarded cicada husks.”

Choo exposes the sense of entitlement in the Qing dynasty’s patriarchal and polygynous society and how women were stripped of fundamental rights. Power was consolidated in the male authority of a family. Therefore, women could be mistreated and killed without any repercussion. This quote uses a simile, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as.” In this case, women are compared to “discarded cicada husks.”

“Retrieving a runaway woman doesn’t sit well with him, but he was dazzled by the photograph.”

Choo suggests that foxes’ power of influence transcends flesh. Even photographs of them capture their power of attraction for humans, whose behavior they can modify in questionable ways.

“How strange to realize that his mother has another life.”

Bao is surprised at the possibility of his mother having interests of her own and a “private” life. This suggests the lengths that women have to go through to have a sense of self. Given that her children were not aware of her preferences and interests, Bao’s mother went out of her way to hide her personhood. Her station as mother and wife dictated that she do so.

“Bao’s heart breaks a little. But just a little, because he has a feeling that this girl [the bookkeeper’s granddaughter] would manage anywhere. […] [T]his child has learned far too much about human nature.”

Though Bao feels secure in the bookkeeper’s granddaughter’s future, he underscores the impossibility of innocence in a girl’s childhood. If one is born a woman, one faces dangerous and personal risks.

“[Snow] reflected sourly that the empire might not be falling if people like Wang stopped wasting candles while peasants were starving in the streets, but humans are always like this.”

This quote gestures to the sociohistorical setting of the narrative. It specifically alludes to the hardships experienced by citizens who were not part of the wealthy (and often corrupt) nobility. Mr. Wang’s greed and selfishness illuminates the mismanagement of the country’s resources.