Huli jing

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nine-tailed fox, from the Qing edition of the Shan Hai Jing

Huli jing (狐狸精 húlijīng) in Chinese mythology are fox spirits that are akin to European faeries or to the Japanese yōkai known as kitsune. Huli jing can be either good spirits or bad spirits.

In Chinese mythology, it is believed that all things are capable of acquiring human forms, magical powers, and immortality, provided that they receive sufficient energy, in such forms as human breath or essence from the moon and the sun.

The fox spirits encountered in tales and legends are usually females and appear as young, beautiful women. One of the most infamous fox spirits in Chinese mythology was Daji (妲己), who is portrayed in the Ming novel Fengshen Yanyi. A beautiful daughter of a general, she was married forcibly to the cruel tyrant Zhou Xin (紂辛 Zhòu Xīn). A nine-tailed fox spirit who served Nüwa, whom Zhou Xin had offended, entered into and possessed her body, expelling the true Daji's soul. The spirit, as Daji, and her new husband schemed cruelly and invented many devices of torture, such as forcing righteous officials to hug red-hot metal pillars.^[1] Because of such cruelties, many people, including Zhou Xin's own former generals, revolted and fought against Zhou Xin's dynasty, Shang. Finally, King Wen of Zhou, one of the vassals of Shang, founded a new dynasty named after his country. The fox spirit in Daji's body was later driven out by Jiang Ziya (姜子牙), the first Prime Minister of the Zhou Dynasty.

Typically fox spirits were seen as dangerous, but some of the stories in Pu Songling's Liaozhai Zhiyi are love stories between a fox appearing as a beautiful girl and a young human male.

In modern Mandarin and Cantonese slang, the term huli jing is a derogatory expression describing a woman who seduces a man ("gold digging").

The fox spirit has also been used as an explanatory factor in the incidence of attacks of koro, an ethnic psychosis found in Southern China and Malaysia in particular.^[2]

[edit] References

^ Fox-spirit Daji invents the Paoluo torture (html). Chinese Torture/Supplice chinois. Retrieved on December 26, 2006.
^ Cheng, S. T. "A critical review of Chinese Koro." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 20(1):67-82 (1996).