THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
The Fox Who Insists on a Ceramic Bowl
Ansheng gets better meals when people misunderstand him. A kitchen bowl, a stubborn lock and a late supper make that joke surprisingly tender.
THE SHORT TAKE
The first eight chapters are at their funniest when you can see the object both parties are arguing over. The framework of wishes becomes more interesting when a wish is too large to grant.
Two accounts of a food bowl
Yu Xueqing starts out with two stainless-steel bowls. She has brought a small white animal home from beside the rubbish and wants something durable enough to see him through a lifetime. He takes one look and objects. In her imagination he has spent his early life behind metal bars on a fur farm. She supplies the cage, the scraps and even a possible punishment. It is an affecting little rescue story. The fox, whose thoughts we can hear, has a less dignified reason for preferring ceramic. As a boy he liked to send the village dogs’ dinner bowls flying with fireworks. He has come into his second life with a keen sense of what boys might do to him.
The lovely thing here is that Yu’s mistake helps. He gets to eat from a dish he likes and she gets to look after someone. Their arrangement can survive a considerable amount of bad translation. The first chapter makes room for both the pleasure of being understood a little and the considerable advantages of keeping the rest to yourself.
Read chapter 1 · Hear both explanations for the ceramic bowl ↗A lock, a pencil and a witness
I enjoyed the stretch of the opening spent trying to lubricate a door. Yu wants her charge to stay home while she works, and the wish he receives includes a sticking lock and a hole in the wall. Getting the lock cylinder to move takes a chair, a borrowed pencil and sufficient purchase for a pair of paws. Ansheng afterward sweeps away the marks with his tail. This is a particularly good use of an animal body in a book about a former human. A man would fix the thing without thinking much about where he stood. A fox would prefer that nobody know he stood there.
One man has already seen too much. Village chief Chen once reported this white visitor to the authorities and saw him transported back to his home region. Then he saw him return by boat. By the time the fox wants to borrow lubricant, Chen has a whole private history behind his decision to run away. I laughed harder at Ansheng’s disappointment than at any of the narrator’s explanations of the village legend.
Read chapter 4 · Watch Ansheng put the chair back after repairing the lock ↗Dinner costs nearly four hundred yuan
When Yu opens the passenger door of the little pink electric car, Ansheng spots enough phones to imagine a criminal enterprise. His former career was in tea sales. It gives him a plausible grasp of what a family tea business can earn and a truly extravagant confidence in his deductions. The author lets his suspicions last through a trip for a takeaway supper. Yu has earned some money and wants to buy her fox something good. Her pleasure in finally being trusted to drive after scraping both sides of her father’s pickup does more to establish her age and circumstances than a page of biography would.
At the food stall she orders crab, fish, small squid and porridge. The bill hurts a little. Later she peels crab for her companion while he privately assesses the quality of the fried garlic. Both of them have brought professional standards to the picnic. Hers concern hospitality. His extend to detecting the shortcuts restaurants take with breadcrumbs.
Read chapter 5 · Ride to the seafood stall in Yu’s borrowed car ↗What the lights cost
The innocent explanation for all those phones turns out to be financially alarming in its own right. Yu’s father has equipped a livestream operation handsomely. He has a costly fill light, another expensive light stick, a record of quarrels with fellow tea sellers and very little revenue. Yu scans the price of the equipment as she brings it indoors. This is where I most appreciated the double voice. Ansheng is already thinking about telling her mother and selling the gear secondhand. What reaches Yu through his little cries sounds like a well-behaved pet asking which things he may touch.
The author sometimes stays with a topical joke for longer than it can carry. Ansheng’s reflections on how online celebrities convert an audience into sales spell out a lesson the price tags have already taught. Yu going quiet while she tidies the living room is enough. She has agreed to spend her summer trying to earn back money her father has spent.
Read chapter 6 · Price the livestream equipment with Yu and the fox ↗The dishes have gone cold
The late visit to Lin Ying’s house makes the preceding jokes about food earn their keep. A fox who has spent the day negotiating for better meals walks past a kitchen full of cold dishes. He searches the rooms upstairs and rouses the woman in bed. The practical business that follows includes an elevator button, a microwave, a power strip and a thermostat left too low. The same intelligence that found a use for a pencil has found a few things it can change in a house where somebody has suffered an irreversible loss.
Lin Ying hears only the sounds of an animal. Ansheng can indulge in an entire fantasy about sending her a bill. What stays with her is the memory of her daughter’s preferred fast-food restaurant. The book lets her have that association privately, beyond the reach of even a magical list of wishes. There is real feeling in the distance between the two of them at that table.
Read chapter 8 · Follow Ansheng past the cold dishes in Lin Ying’s house ↗Based on chapters 1–8 of the English edition. The first eight catalogue entries each contain one complete story chapter. This is an opening impression, not a full-series verdict. No later plot developments are discussed.
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