In this story a young farmer finds that a fox is making an elixir of life. The farmer being a greedy person waits for his opportunity and steals the elixir from the fox and immediately swallows. The fox is super angry but can do nothing because the farmer is much stronger than him. Due to this the fox leaves in anger without doing anything.
After swallowing the fox fire the farmer grows magical abilities that allow him to do things such as heal sick people, turn himself invisible, and pleading for people who had committed sin. He grows very rich doing this for people as people are in need for these abilities. He eventually retires when he is fifty and just sits outside drinking wine all day. One day he wakes up from his drunken stupor and finds out that the fox is right behind him. The fox pats his back until the foxfire leaves through his throat and snatches it back.
I found it very interesting that the fox waits until he is old and rich to take back what is rightfully his. Even though the fox was very angry about the farmer stealing his elixir of life he still allows him to hang on to it for 30 years. It struck me as the fox understood that he should share his gift.
Bibliography: This story comes from the Chinese Fairy Tales reading unit. Which is from the book The Chinese Fairy Tales ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).
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