107 pages • 3 hours read
Ken LiuThe Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Story 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 4 Summary: “Good Hunting”
Thirteen-year-old Liang is going on his first hulijing hunt with his father. The hulijing is a demon that looks like a woman and steals hearts. Liang and his father have tied the merchant’s son, whom the hulijing has bewitched, to a bed. The merchant’s son’s cries attract the hulijing, and when Liang sees her, he feels mesmerized. He didn’t realize she would be so beautiful or so sad.
Liang’s father attacks the hulijing with the sword Swallow Tail, but he misses and hits a door. Liang’s job is to throw a pot full of dog urine on her, but the demon talks to him, calling him brave, and he hesitates. Still, a small amount of dog urine is enough, and it freezes her in the act of transforming into a fox. She runs, and Liang’s father chases her.
Determined to redeem himself, Liang traps the hulijing, only it is smaller than he remembered. It’s one of the hulijing’s children. He fights with the creature until it turns into a young girl, who asks him why he is chasing them. Liang explains that her mother bewitched the merchant’s son, but the girl says that her mother was trying to keep the merchant’s son alive.
