‘Who knows? There are both male and female fox spirits in this red-dust world of ours. No one can tell for sure. I don’t know too much about Wei, but if you want, you may talk to a flower girl surnamed Zhang or Zhan. She’s a sort of a confidante for Xuanji. Her flower garden is located near the southern end of the village. She sent flowers to Xuanji regularly for her parties, and Xuanji or Wei occasionally went to her flower garden to pick up the orders, too. She surely can tell you much more about him. And about her as well. Most of the neighbors here did not want to mix with Xuanji or Wei, but that flower girl was an exception. Xuanji’s a very valuable customer for her.’

‘That’s true.’

‘I don’t have her address, but you don’t have to worry about it. You just need to ask the village people there for the flower girl. She’s just another young fox spirit like Xuanji.’

‘How?’

‘Young girls like her should not have mixed with people in public. In the time-honored Confucian tradition, they should stay at home and wait for an arranged marriage. She lost her parents when she was just a teenager, and she turned into a flower girl. Indeed, they are young fox spirits of the same-colored hair.’

Enough of hearsay about the fox spirits for one meal, Yang contemplated, and he failed to see anything wrong with a young girl struggling to support herself. He raised the last question over the cup. ‘Just one more question. Xuanji’s a renowned poetess. How can I obtain a copy of her poems? It’s for my master, who is an impossible bookworm.’

‘You may try your luck at the local temple market fair, but it’s still more than a month away – I mean the next market fair. For the moment, though,’ Bao said with a wine-sodden hiccup, ‘you may contact a typesetter/printer surnamed Mo in the town, who did a limited edition for her, I’ve heard. For reasons beyond me, the mayor also asked me about her poetry collections. There must be a lot of bookworms under the Tang Dynasty sun.’

‘That would be very helpful – the address of the typesetter, I mean.’

‘Here it is. It’s not too far away.’

‘Thank you so much, Bao. I’m afraid I have to run a couple more errands for my master, but you can take your time finishing the wine.’

Yang copied Mo’s address, paid the bill, and left the eatery with the neighborhood coordinator still burying his head in the leftovers on the table.

Again, Yang hurried back to the town, like tumbleweed rolling in the wind, and he started to feel weary with the trips back and forth between the village and the town.

Luckily, it was not too much effort to find Mo, the typesetter/printer/publisher in question.