Women as Shapeshifting Fox Spirits in Chinese Tales of the Strange

Wayne Stein >

AKA Doc Nirvana>

Often fox demons in Asia chose the female gender to inhabit. Why? Keep in mind, these demons are actually aliens from another planet.

Because women as victims are often physically and sexually mistreated by men in Chinese culture. For the demons, women are the perfect vehicle in which to hide in as they prey on their real victim: men.

According to scholar, Patrick Galloway, the Judeo Christian approaches to the supernatural start to crumble for Western audiences when exposed to Eastern traditions because of the conflicting cultural sensibilities that arise.

Things in the dark operate according to different laws in different cultures. Thus, for my students at a Midwestern university, Asian horror does not translate successfully culturally especially the Chinese narratives of the “strange” or xiaoshuo.

Within a challenging polyphany of voices, the Chinese master of the strange, Pu Song Ling (1640–1715) wrote stories about fox spirits, hulu jing, specifically one called “Painted Skin” which maintains a special place in the horror heart of Asians and has been made into a multitude of films, television shows, and music videos.

This centers on ways students can culturally understand these alien shape shifting spirits of the hulu jing.

My students have to do a lot to unpack, uncover, and decode with these shapeshifting beings.

One pedagogical approach that I have found effective is what I call “Critical Creativity” where I ask my classes to rethink these tales and reconstruct them trying to maintain their cultural nuances through religious, psychological, and political lenses.

We start with Marxist theory to match the Confucian Marxism of Chinese society today. We uncover the three teachings of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism — the San Jiao — which operate in a symbiotic manner as exoteric knowledge.

Later, the class starts to merge into the esoteric lens of alchemist magic that better explicates these tales of the strange. Join me as I cut into the silence of the marginalized gender in search of karmic eternal justice: the bao.

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This remains my most read work on Asian horror. The completed work is published in: Horror Literature and Dark Fantasy: Challenging Genres

Edited book by Mark A. Fabrizi, Ph.D.