Huli jing

A fox crosses a moonlit courtyard in a story from late imperial China, pauses, and lifts a paw to balance something invisible on its head. There is a skull there. The fox bows once. If the skull does not fall she can begin, that night, to walk upright. If it falls she stays a fox and tries again on another evening. The image is a fair introduction to a creature defined by patience, balance, and the slow accumulation of something the rest of the world calls power.

The huli jing is the oldest of East Asia’s fox spirits, older than the kitsune of Japan and the kumiho of Korea, both of which descend from her. The character jīng means essence, the refined inner stuff of a thing, and the term carries that sense rather than the cruder English word “demon.” A huli jing is a fox who has accumulated essence. She has absorbed sunlight and moonlight, breathed for centuries on the cold air of pine forests, sometimes stolen the breath of men, and through this slow alchemy has become more than fox. The fourth-century commentator Guo Pu set down a clean numerology of progress that later writers copied for over a thousand years: at fifty years the fox can take the shape of a woman, at one hundred a beautiful woman or a sorcerer, at a thousand she ascends to heaven and becomes a celestial fox.

In the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, a nine-tailed fox lives in the wild country of Qingqiu and cries with the voice of a human infant. The same passage notes, with the unsentimental practicality of the text, that her flesh if eaten protects against poison. Other early sources made her an auspicious sign. White and nine-tailed foxes were presented to Han emperors as omens of peace. Tu Shan, the wife of Yu the Great and legendary mother of the Xia dynasty, was said in some traditions to have come from a nine-tailed fox clan. On Han stone reliefs the fox stands beside Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, as one of her celestial attendants. In the beginning the huli jing was a creature of luck.

Then her reputation darkened. As the idea took hold that old animals gain spiritual power, the fox became suspect. Beautiful women in remote inns, scholars who knew too much, lonely widows whose lamps burned past midnight: any of them might be a fox. The most famous case is Daji, the consort of King Di Xin, last ruler of the Shang. In the Ming novel Fengshen Yanyi, the Investiture of the Gods, the goddess Nüwa sends a nine-tailed fox to take Daji’s body and bring the dynasty down from the inside. The fox enters Daji while she sleeps, expels the woman’s soul, and walks out into court in her skin. What follows is invented torture and political collapse. Bronze pillars are heated until they glow and righteous officials are ordered to embrace them. Pits are dug and filled with snakes. The king, besotted, signs everything she puts in front of him. When the Zhou armies finally break Shang, the prime minister Jiang Ziya drives the fox out of Daji’s body, and Nüwa, who sent her, condemns her for going too far.

A second nine-tailed fox was later blamed for possessing Baosi, queen of King You of Western Zhou, and for the fall of that dynasty too. A pattern formed. When a kingdom failed there was usually a fox somewhere in the room.

Away from the court, she lived a quieter life. The seventeenth-century scholar Pu Songling collected hundreds of huli jing tales in his Liaozhai Zhiyi, and many are love stories. A young scholar studies late, hears a footstep on the path, opens his door to find a beautiful woman who needs lodging for the night. She stays. They live together for years, sometimes for a lifetime. Sometimes she brings him fortune, helps him pass his examinations, raises children with him. Sometimes the family wakes one morning to find an old red tail trailing out from under the bedclothes. Sometimes she leaves before dawn and never returns. In one strand of belief she rises from her grave at night, perches on a rooftop to watch for prey, and seduces scholars in particular for the refined essence of their study.

The texture is what makes her. In one tale a man wakes to find a tawny red flank pressed against his side and a sharp pink yawn beside his ear. In another a woman lifts her sleeve and the shadow on the wall behind her is the wrong shape. A glass of wine pressed on her in company is risky for both of them, since drink can loosen the seam between her two bodies, and once she has gone too far the human shape slips. Dogs are the constant problem. No matter how perfect the disguise, the fox cannot hide her scent from a dog, and a barking dog will sometimes panic her so badly that she reverts on the spot. Hunters in northern China kept dogs for this reason.

Belief in her was strong enough that it survived the imperial state’s repeated attempts to outlaw her cult. In 1111, on the eve of the Jurchen invasion, the Song emperor Huizong ordered every fox shrine in Kaifeng destroyed. The city fell within months and the dynasty inside five. One seventeenth-century author shrugged that out of every ten houses in the capital, six or seven kept fox demons of their own, and that they did no harm and people were used to them. In Beijing into the twentieth century some households still kept a small shrine to Xianjia, the polite name for the resident fox, and one might pray there to cure a sick child. The anti-superstition campaigns drove the practice mostly underground. It did not vanish.

Her powers are wide and proportional to her age. She can take human form of either sex and any age, project illusions and glamours, walk through solid walls, see for a thousand li, communicate with heaven, possess people, and bewilder them into forgetting their own names. She can confer wealth on those she favors and madness on those she does not. Her weaknesses are equally specific. Dogs see through her. Drink exposes her. Her tail is the seat of her power, and if it can be cut from her body she becomes ordinary; to attempt the cut and fail, however, is to invite a curse on every descendant in the family line. The huli jing who chooses to feed on human essence climbs faster but caps her ascent, since the celestial realm is closed to those who took shortcuts at the cost of human lives. Only the foxes who cultivate from sun, moon, and forest, who refuse the easy meal, ever finish the climb.

This is what makes her so persistent in the imagination. She is the figure who could go either way, in every century, in every story. A scholar in a Qing-era inn looks across the table at the woman who arrived without luggage and cannot tell if he has met his ruin or his life’s great love. Often the answer is both.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Huli Jing?

A Huli Jing is a Chinese fox spirit who has accumulated spiritual essence over centuries until it can take human form, cast illusions, and ultimately ascend to celestial immortality. The Chinese term jīng means refined inner essence rather than “demon,” and a Huli Jing is a fox who has gathered enough of this essence through absorbing sunlight, moonlight, and sometimes human breath to become more than animal. The Huli Jing is the oldest of East Asia’s fox spirits, predating the Japanese kitsune and Korean kumiho, both of which descend from her.

How does a Huli Jing grow nine tails?

A Huli Jing grows additional tails by absorbing essence from the sun, moon, pine forests, and sometimes the breath of men over centuries of slow cultivation. The fourth-century commentator Guo Pu set out a widely repeated progression: at fifty years the fox can take the shape of a woman, at one hundred a beautiful woman or sorcerer, and at one thousand years she ascends to heaven as a celestial fox. Nine tails mark the highest stage of this development.

Who is Daji, and what does she have to do with the Huli Jing?

Daji was the consort of King Di Xin, last ruler of the Shang dynasty, and in the Ming novel Fengshen Yanyi she was possessed by a nine-tailed Huli Jing sent by the goddess Nüwa to bring the dynasty down from the inside. The fox expelled Daji’s soul, took her body, and used her position at court to engineer atrocities including heating bronze pillars until they glowed and forcing righteous officials to embrace them, and filling pits with snakes. When the Zhou armies finally broke the Shang, the prime minister Jiang Ziya drove the fox out of Daji’s body, and Nüwa herself condemned the fox for going too far.

How can a Huli Jing be detected or defeated?

A Huli Jing’s most reliable weakness is dogs, which can smell through any disguise and sometimes panic her so badly that she reverts to fox form on the spot. Alcohol also loosens the seam between her human and fox bodies, and the seat of her power is her tail: cutting it from her body strips her abilities, but attempting the cut and failing brings a curse on every descendant in the family line. Hunters in northern China kept dogs for this reason.

Are Huli Jing good or evil?

Huli Jing can be either, and the ambivalence is central to how Chinese folk tradition has treated them for two thousand years. Some Huli Jing drain men of vital essence through nightly visits and serve in dynastic legend as agents of imperial ruin, while others take human husbands, bear them children, bring them fortune, and were worshipped at household and roadside shrines for protection, fortune, and healing. The same fox who might destroy a man might also be his life’s great love, and the stories rarely settle which she is.

Related Entries

Nüwa, Yu the Great, Xiwangmu, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, Yaoguai, Chinese Mythology, Kitsune, Kyūbi-no-kitsune, Tamamo-no-Mae, Kumiho, Gumiho, Inari, Teumessian fox