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Ape Brides and Fox Neighbors: Coping with the Alien in Chinese Anecdote and Drama
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Organizer: Rania Huntington, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Chair: Daphne Pi-Wei Lei, Tufts University
Discussant: Timothy R. Tangherlini, University of California, Los Angeles
The idea of the other as an indispensable part of the self is widely accepted; how does that dynamic change when the other is not human, or imaginary? Our panel will use ape and fox spirits to explore Chinese concepts of the alien. The fascination of these figures depends on the crossing of boundaries. They occupy the liminal space between us and other, civilization and barbarism, human and beast, the real and the imaginary, attraction and repulsion; by standing between these categories, they embody the tension between them. We will explore the interplay of gender, ethnic, and species difference in the construction of the alien, and the changes in that construction at different cultural moments.
Xiaofei Kang will discuss the intersection of "hu," fox, and "hu," barbarian in the Tang. Stories about fox spirits were a means of depicting assimilation and defeat of the outsider both on the family and the national level. Rania Huntington will examine Qing narratives about foxes residing in human homes and being worshipped. By telling stories about how they and others coped with aliens in the most intimate sphere, Qing authors also made distinctions between humans. Daphne Lei will look at popular border-crossing dramas of the turn of the twentieth century. The figure of Su Wu’s barbarian, ape wife shows the marginalization of the alien in gender and species terms at a time of tension about Chinese national identity. Our discussant Timothy Tangherlini will place the Chinese aliens in the context of international folklore.
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The Fox (hu) and the Barbarian (hu): Unraveling the Supernaturals in Tang Tales
Xiaofei Kang, Columbia University
During the Tang fox spirits were widely worshipped in village homes and extensively recorded by literati scholars. Fox spirits that were enshrined at home became insiders of the family. However, when they took on human bodies and sought to marry they were considered disruptive of normal life and were kept outside of the family. For the Tang literati writers, fox women impersonated courtesans and the like who provided them sensual pleasure and romantic fantasies, and yet had to be excluded from their formal family. Fox men, on the other hand, represented an idealized literati self-image that challenged their egos and had to be driven away.
For the Tang people family epitomized the inside world as opposed to the outside sphere of Chinese political and cultural dominance. The hu (fox), in Chinese a homophone of the hu, (barbarian), became a convenient tool to express their feelings toward elements of foreign religions and cultures that permeated many aspects of Tang life. The cultivation of the fox toward humanity and immortality corresponded to the degree to which the "barbarians" were transformed into Chinese. Confrontations between foxes who assumed the forms of gods or monks and Daoist or Buddhist exorcists show that the Tang people acknowledged the limited efficacy of "barbarian" power but were also determined to subject them into Chinese superiority.
Religious practices, family concerns and social experience mutually authenticated each other, reinforcing the marginal position of the fox and the social categories it embodied. The fox tales, as "petty talk" about the supernatural, reveal weighty matters in Tang mentality.
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The Alien Among Us: Foxes in Qing Homes and Society
Rania Huntington, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
According to Qing accounts, fox spirits commonly lived in human homes, both upper and lower class, urban and rural; and there are frequent accounts of religious relationships with the foxes. In exchange for a place to live and perhaps food offerings, people might be granted protection, profit, or conversation. The fox was in the paradoxical position of the alien closest to human households and human identity.
Accounts of relations with these aliens became a means of self-representation and comment on other humans. Different narratives are held at different distances by their authors: there are stories about oneself, named friends, anonymous strangers, apparently fictional characters, and people of another class or sex. Thus at the same time that foxes are ubiquitous in the human world, their presence is controlled. All sorts of people interact with foxes, but the distinctions between people are reinforced. Communication with the fox is cherished, but any form of financial transaction is attributed to "other" people’s improper relations with "their" foxes. "Our" relations with foxes are based on mutual respect, but they are motivated with concern for gain. "We" can make peace with foxes, but many others are tormented. By looking at narratives about foxes in the home, one can get a view of Qing society from the perspective of the forgotten attics and corners which the foxes haunted. The fox is revealing because it stands on the boundary between "us" and "them."
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Doubling the Marginalization, Doubling the Pleasure: Bestializing Barbarians in Chinese Local Drama at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Daphne Pi-Wei Lei, Tufts University
At the turn of the twentieth century, when China had been ruled by the "non-Chinese" Manchurians for more than two centuries, and was facing the dual threat of Western colonization and internal political turmoil, a "true" Chinese identity desperately needed clarification and confirmation. During this era, the traditional genre of border-crossing drama—which regularly featured the marginalization of "barbarians" and the celebration of Chinese nationalist ideologies—took on a new mission in the form of popular local drama.
Late Qing border-crossing drama needed a new strategy to marginalize the new barbarian threats faced by the Chinese; the association of barbarians and beasts was part of this strategy. Su Wu’s barbarian wife, an ape-woman, is a good example. Theatrical convention illuminates certain popular beliefs of the time. As a huadan ("flower female," a dramatic type for "vivacious female" opposed to "dignified female," qingyi), the ape-woman always demonstrates her tantalizing sexuality (atypical repertory for huadan), and her tragic feminine pathos (in the parting scene, a necessary plot component in border-crossing drama). As the populace experienced direct social and economic effects of Western imperialism at the turn of the century, the search for a Chinese identity was at least as important to them as it was to the educational and economic elite. The double marginalization which took place in border-crossing drama of the time—the femininizing and bestializing of the barbaric Westerners—was a way both to secure a uniquely theatrical pleasure and to enact Chinese superiority for local audiences.
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