Original Text
In Changshan County there lived a resident who, whenever he had nothing to do, was often visited by a short guest who would come and chat endlessly. He had never known this guest before, so he harbored constant suspicion. One day, the short guest said, "In another three or five days I will be moving, and then I can become your neighbor." After four or five days had passed, the guest said, "Now we are already in the same village, and morning and evening I can converse with you." The resident asked the guest, "Where have you moved your home to?" The guest did not reveal the exact location, merely pointing north with his hand. From then on, the guest came almost every day; sometimes he would borrow tools from others, and if someone was stingy and refused to lend them, the tools would soon disappear without explanation. Everyone suspected that the short guest was a fox spirit. At that time, north of the village there was an ancient burial mound, long sunken deep into the ground, and no one knew how deep it truly was; people guessed that the fox family lived there. So the villagers gathered together, armed with knives, spears, and clubs, and surrounded the ancient mound north of the village. Someone lay down on the ground and listened carefully, but for a long time heard nothing. As the first watch was drawing to a close, the people heard sounds from within the cave, like dozens or hundreds of people whispering. The villagers held their breath and did not move. Suddenly, they saw a great crowd of little people, each about a foot tall, emerging one after another from the cave, until there were so many they could not be counted. The villagers shouted and rose up, striking the little people fiercely. Every blow of the club produced a flash of light, and the little people vanished in an instant without a trace. They left behind only a small hairpin, about the size of a walnut shell, made of gauze and wound with gold thread. When smelled, it was both rank and foul, beyond description in words.
Commentary
This passage does not explicitly reveal the identity of the "Short Guest," but from the concluding remark that it was "foul-smelling beyond words," one suspects it might have been a fox spirit, which is indeed plausible, though it could also have been something else entirely; the tale is woven with a bewildering and eerie ambiguity, where both the "tiny man, no more than a foot tall, emerging from a linked series of baskets" and the "small hairpin, like a walnut shell, adorned with gauze and golden threads" are romantic and evocative, likely the very mysterious effect the author sought to achieve. The "Short Guest" in the story, lacking the ability to protect itself yet strutting about the human world seeking trouble, can be said to have brought humiliation upon itself.