Pu Song-ling's “The Wise Neighbor”

Some of the stories that you will read in this class, as I have cautioned you before, require that you suspend disbelief. "The Wise Neighbor" is one of those stories. Here we see interaction between natural and supernatural, and everything seems quite regular. The "undercurrent of whimsy and humor" that the headnote to this story mentions, if nothing else, provides a welcome distraction from the realism in contemporary European literature. Friends, suspend disbelief: sure, fox spirits. Great! For more information about Pu Song-Ling, see http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_artqa/2003-09/24/content_41674.htm.