Now, I am one of them. We also hadn’t had to deal with a hulijing in years. “If this gets out, the matchmakers won’t touch him at all.”. As I let his body down, my heart numb, I thought that he was not unlike those he had hunted all his life: they were all sustained by an old magic that had left and would not return, and they did not know how to survive without it. It was a hot day, and the men were seeking some shade from the noon sun. Yan leapt out of the door like a bolt of lightning. “Just know that it’s not the same.”. “I mean it’s getting harder for me to return to my true form,” she continued, “to hunt. But now the courtyard was empty. Liang agrees. “How’s hunting?” I asked. This short story deserved all its awards, and it’s a must-read. This was the funicular railway, the tram line to the top of Victoria Peak, where the masters of Hong Kong lived and the Chinese were forbidden to stay. Good Hunting. Half-delirious, he was tied to his bed for his own good, but Father had left a window open so that his plaintive cries could be carried by the breeze far over the rice paddies. Photographs of her had been in all the papers. I realized, suddenly, how much strength I had in my metal arms. It had taken a decade of hard work. “But I’m sure there will be a jumping corpse soon. “Don’t let the Chinese ghosts get you,” a woman with bright blond hair said in the tram, and her companions laughed. I was about to pour the remaining dog piss on it when I realized that the animal was much smaller than the hulijing we had been chasing. A moment later, I saw a small white fox jump over the broken back wall and disappear into the night. I lost myself in the work, which was hard and satisfying. They either went to the Christian missionary or the new teacher who said he’d studied in San Francisco. The other man, dressed in a crisp suit, looked skeptical. We gazed at the broken hands of the buddha for a while. Father nodded and left for home. Her legs, what I could see of them, were made of shiny chrome. She stood still, hesitating, suspecting a trap. In Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie,” the tragedy of racism is depicted within a multicultural family. He was an English major at Harvard, and after graduation worked in technology for several years, including time at Microsoft as an engineer and working for a startup in Cambridge. Another Word: The Joy of Helping by Ken Liu - December 2016; Another Word: Let's Write a Story Together, MacBook by Ken Liu - January 2016; Another Word: It's Good to Be Lazy and Foolish by Ken Liu - May 2015; Cassandra by Ken Liu - March 2015; Staying Sensitive in the Crowd: A Conversation with Chen Qiufan by Ken Liu - March 2015 “The world’s changing,” Yan said. An occasional hoot from an owl. It was first published in Strange Horizons in October 2012. Ken Liu (Goodreads Author) 3.47 avg rating — 43 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions Want to Read saving… “Good Hunting” uses 2D and 3D animation to their fullest potential to tell an emotionally riveting story. I think that’s why the old magic is leaving. Ken Liu drew his inspiration for The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species from his admiration of stories about whole groups of people or ideas, like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Based on the short story by Ken Liu, we follow the journey of Liang, a Chinese spirit hunter, whose views on the supernatural are forever changed when he falls in love with a huli jing (fox-woman). Characters / Love, Death & Robots: "Good Hunting" Go To. She turned around and silently ran out of the cell. EP394: Good Hunting By Ken Liu Read by John Chu--Night. After five years, I knew the rhythmic rumbling of the pistons and the staccato grinding of the gears as well as I knew my own breath and heartbeat. How could I become a demon hunter if I was so easily enticed? But five years of wrangling heavy machinery had given me a muscular frame, and they took a look at my face and hands, grimy with engine grease, and probably decided that it wasn’t worth it to get into a public tussle with a lowly Chinese engineer. The pain was excruciating. I cried out and jumped back. It is time to let the magic of chrome and steel work their way. The adapted script was by Philip Gelatt. But might I trouble your gracious ear with a suggestion?”, “Some of the local villagers are worried about the proposed path of the railroad. To his surprise, the son befriends the hulijing ‘s daughter. However, … Story 4 Summary: “Good Hunting” Thirteen-year-old Liang is going on his first hulijing hunt with his father. I learned to repair clockwork, to design intricate systems of gears and devise ingenious uses for levers. “Why are you after us?” she asked. Who would believe a legless Chinese whore? Today was my thirteenth birthday, and this was my first hunt. There was no seduction in her voice. I focused on the way light moved along the gleaming curves of her calves so that I didn’t have to look into her face. All I have is my beauty, the same thing that your father and you killed my mother for. The sword was charged with hundreds of Daoist blessings and had drunk the blood of countless demons. Everyone tittered while the police turned the city upside down, looking for her. There was a kind of music to their orderly cacophony that moved me, like the clashing of cymbals and gongs at the start of a folk opera. In “Good Hunting,” Westernization moves into China with the arrival of the railroad, leaching the Chinese magic. It was only an old and heavy sword, rusty, but still perfectly capable of striking down anyone who might be lying in wait. I could not bear to watch her try to ply her trade with me. Title: Good Hunting (15 Mar 2019) 8.1 /10. Magical creatures adapt by using technology and changing into mechanical shapeshifters. By my thirtieth birthday, new designs for steam engines required less coal and delivered more power. I hesitated. His first short story appearing in 2002, fourteen years and more than eighty stories later, Ken Liu’s first collection finally hits shelves in 2016. I opened the door, Swallow Tail in my hand. “There’s only one thing I can do.” Her voice broke for a second and became defiant, like a pebble tossed into the pool. Liang and his father have tied the merchant’s son, whom the hulijing has bewitched, to a bed. Synopsis. I whispered an apology to my mother, packed up the chicken we had brought for her, and walked the three li to the other side of the hill, to the abandoned temple. Father and I crouched behind the scholar’s rock in the courtyard. Her voice was like sweet, cold lotus paste, and I wanted to hear her talk forever. And the pungent perfume she wore assaulted my nose. My face hot and my heart hammering, I averted my eyes from the demon’s face and focused on her stance. “I mean,” she continued, “are you happy? It’s a story that has power and I could easily see it as a feature film. “I’m sorry.” And I knew that she didn’t know what else to say either. “A hulijing cannot resist the cries of the man she has bewitched.”. She was even prettier than the opera singer that I couldn’t stop thinking about last year. “What will you do?” I asked, thinking about her, alone in the hills and unable to find the food that sustained her magic. I devoured every book on the principle and operation of the steam engine I could find. She didn’t. We held our breaths, hoping that we wouldn’t be discovered. Based on the short story of the same name by Ken Liu. “She may have pups here. A passing cloud obscured the moon for a moment, throwing everything into darkness. The bookmaking habits of select species State change The perfect match Good hunting The literomancer Simulacrum The regular The paper menagerie An advanced readers' picture book of comparative cognition The waves Mono no aware All the flavors A brief history of the trans-pacific tunnel The litigation master and the monkey king The man who ended history: a documentary. Tito W. James is a journalist writing for Comicon.com with a focus is on highlighting high quality independent content. Liang wishes Yan "good hunting" and they part ways. Voiced by: Matthew Yang King. Ashamed, I followed. A moment later, I heard a group of men making their way into the temple. “But will any of them thrive?” she asked. She dodged out of the way as though she had eyes on the back of her head. “How’s hunting?” I asked. Fields lay fallow. “He is clever,” my shift supervisor said, “for a Chinaman. “One day, shortly after that last time we talked, I felt the last bit of magic leave me. Judging was the luxury of those who did not need to survive. “Maybe next time.”, “Now, don’t be stupid,” the first man said, his voice hardening. By the end of my shift, it was dark. The merchant and his wife and all the servants had been sent away. A terrible thing had been done to me, but I could also be terrible. How’s hunting for you?”, “Not so great either. I was thirty-five when she showed up at my door again, like a memory from long ago. “Brazen demon!” I picked up the clay pot. One tried to put his arms around her, and she backed out of the way. I checked the pressure, applied sealant on the gaskets, tightened the flanges, replaced the worn-down gears in the backup cable assembly. Paper Menagerie. “She’s getting away!”. It seemed less like a railroad track than a ladder straight up to heaven. Posted on 29. She nibbled on a chicken wing absent-mindedly. The seemingly familiar beginning of the story has a strong effect on the audience, as we start to feel that we can predict what will happen next. Another grunt from Father. I don’t have claws. He had a strange accent, but I could understand him just fine. “Like how the Butterfly Lovers cannot resist each other?” I thought back to the folk opera troupe that had come through our village last fall. The large house was eerily quiet. Night. Through the rock’s many holes I could see the bedroom window of the merchant’s son. And stop using the word lure. Yan’s money helped, but some things money couldn’t buy, especially skill and knowledge. But if you compared things over a few years, it was almost like you lived in a different world. He didn’t realize she would be so beautiful or so sad. I found Yan kneeling in the main hall, near the place where my father had killed her mother five years ago. Could you consider shifting the line of the tracks a little, to follow the feng shui masters’ suggestions?”, Thompson rolled his eyes. She wasn’t exactly a friend. Eventually, I put the pot back down. These were the most beautiful mechanical legs I had ever seen. Her face was thus frozen halfway between a woman’s and a fox’s, with a hairless snout and raised, triangular ears that twitched angrily. She howled, and the sound, like a dog’s but so much wilder, caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. She wore her hair up in a bun, in the style of a young woman who had had her jijili, the ceremony that meant she was no longer a girl. “How can you be done for the day when we still want you?” a man’s voice came to me. All that moaning and crying he did drove her to distraction, and she had to go see him every night just to keep him quiet.”, “She lures innocent scholars and draws on their life essence to feed her evil magic! The streets filled with automatic rickshaws and horseless carriages, and most people who could afford them had machines that kept the air cool in houses and the food cold in boxes in the kitchen—all powered by steam. It’s bad feng shui.”, “It is kind of like how a man breathes,” the mandarin said, huffing a few times to make sure the Englishman understood. Good Hunting The story was a bit … Are you happy to keep an engine running all day, yourself like another cog? Mr. Alexander Findlay Smith, owner of the Peak Tram and an avid engineer himself, had seen an opportunity. But I promise we’ll work hard afterwards and finish the survey on time.”, “The trouble with you Chinese is your endless superstition,” the foreigner said. “I miss being a fox,” she said. Ken Liu ( http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. It was the night of Yulan, I realized, the Ghost Festival. But it was enough. One morning, as I repaired a broken governor—a delicate bit of work—two pairs of polished shoes stopped on the platform above me. I could hear the fire in the miniature boiler in her torso grow hotter as the pressure of the steam built up. “Ah, now you’re judging me.”, “I have a good job I want to keep,” I said. I set the clay pot on the ground and lunged. Yan had explained to me that the hulijing chose to live near human villages because they liked to have human things in their lives: conversation, beautiful clothes, poetry and stories, and, occasionally, the love of a worthy, kind man. I should get something for my father, maybe pick up some paper money at Mongkok. It took us almost a whole year to complete the task. “One night about a month ago, the merchant’s son stumbled upon my mother, caught in a chicken farmer’s trap. Her face was the hardest. The light touch of my father’s hand against the back of my neck jolted me out of my mesmerized state. Suddenly, I felt sorry for her and wanted more than anything else to make her smile. Tonight is reserved for the ghosts.”. “I’ve just broken the hands off of this god of yours with my cane,” Thompson said. Father and I saw her dodging into the abandoned temple about a li outside the village. I had heard rumors that the Manchu Emperor had lost a war and been forced to give up all kinds of concessions, one of which involved paying to help the foreigners build a road of iron. Through this short story, Liu wanted to imagine forms of writing different from human's tangible form. If You Enjoyed I thought about my father’s attempts to keep up a cheerful mien as fewer and fewer customers came to us. “This isn’t a discussion. I could no longer claim to be attuned to that vanished world of my childhood. “I dream of hunting in this jungle of metal and asphalt,” she said. An occasional hoot from an owl. “I didn’t want to work anymore. This is a story that begins as a fantasy fairy tale and ends as a gritty piece of steampunk. Good Hunting. The protagonist and narrator of the story. I had doused her while she was in the midst of her transformation. As I have gotten older, the themes of the film stick with me more and more. In front of my eyes, she folded and unfolded like a silvery origami construction, until finally, a chrome fox as beautiful and deadly as the oldest legends stood before me. It smelled of burnt wood, of the heart of the earth. So close to her, I finally noticed her scent. It was surprisingly strong for such a small animal. I wanted to think about my mother.”. However, the rise of British imperialism in China gives rise to a steampunk technological future. This collection has a lot of material for readers to think about, more than good against evil but also about our existence and its meaning. She looked at the chicken bits she had left for her mother. ← State Change • 2004 • Magic Realism short story by Ken Liu. I couldn’t remember any dreams. But the hulijing remained hunters who felt most free in their fox form. He’s the one who wouldn’t leave her alone.”, I was taken aback. There don’t seem to be as many snake spirits or angry ghosts as a few years ago. The final act where fox-woman’s body is forcibly replaced with machinery was heartbreaking but it only makes her final form all the more powerful. It was first published in Strange Horizons in October 2012. The Buddhist and Daoist monks all agree that it’s the railroad.”. “In this new age of steam and electricity, in this great metropolis, except for those who live on the Peak, is anyone still in their true form?” she asked. I took a deep breath and smelled fire and smoke, engine oil and polished metal, the scent of power. I have to thank you for that. People stopped coming to Father and me to ask for our services. “I choked him until he fainted, and then I took all the money I could find and left. Two Englishmen blocked her path. But her eyes were still the same, and they shone in the moonlight with excitement. You worship statues of mud when you should be thinking about building roads from iron and weapons from steel.”. “The temple hasn’t been able to maintain a contingent of monks for many years,” the mandarin said. But now I was used to enduring the thunderous pounding of pistons and the deafening hiss of high-pressured steam rushing through valves. I invented ways to connect the world of hardened and ruggedized clockwork to the world of miniaturized and regulated piston and clean steam. “She liked her freedom and didn’t want anything to do with him. She bent down and began to pull up her dress. But I did not think of her harshly. “Thank you.” And she carefully tore off a leg and bit into it daintily. He pulled but could not free the weapon immediately. Will you help me?”, I stepped up and embraced her. “Does this one still have any power?” Thompson asked. “Are you the man who came up with the idea of using a larger flywheel for the old engine?”. There was no more talk about changing the path of the railroad. As the railroad progresses into their area, magic begins to fade out. A more powerful kind of magic has come.”. It’s over. Buzzy Mag – Science Fiction Magazine – News, Reviews, Interviews and Original Fiction. “As you can see, I have not been struck by lightning or suffered any other calamity. Your son just needs a little help.”, “You must save him,” the merchant’s wife had said, bowing like a chicken pecking at rice. Come along now and do what you’re supposed to.”, “Well, I think it is my business,” I said, “seeing as how you’re talking to my sister.”. Then another growl, and the sound of my father’s curses. But now mechanical arms served drinks in the bars along Central and machine hands fashioned shoes and clothes in factories in the New Territories. “He spared no expense. He explained to me that he had a secret: he liked machines more than flesh, couldn’t get hard with a regular woman.”. Love, Death, and Robots is currently streaming on Netflix. Her eyes had lost their lively luster; they looked dead. Through the rock’s many holes I could see the bedroom window of the merchant’s son. You see, they think the tracks that have already been laid are blocking off veins of qi in the earth. Father put a warm hand on my shoulder, and I felt calmer. “I’d like to stay here for a while,” I said. This is why you people lost the war to Britain. “I will go through the front door. “I’m sorry,” I said, unable to offer anything else. I caught a faint trace of her natural scent, fresh and lovely as always. It was strange, what Yan and I shared. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, as well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other places. It was Qingming, the Festival of the Dead. “Thank you,” she said, and leaned in as I put my arms around her true form. She held up her finger against my lips. A moment of confusion was followed by a rush of anger. She had to transform into her human form to escape, and as soon as he saw her, he became infatuated. I stepped outside the engine room and saw a full moon in the sky as another tram filled with passengers was pulled up the side of the mountain, powered by my engine. She turned and snarled, showing two rows of sharp, white teeth, and I stumbled back. “I brought you this,” I said, and handed her the steamed chicken. “Don’t,” I said, and turned my face away. But the Chinese were good enough to shovel coal into the boilers and grease the gears. She watched bits of burnt paper being carried into the sky by the heat from the flames. Some nights I can’t do it at all. They grew smaller and smaller. “Even the great scholar Wong Lai once spent three nights in the company of one, and he took first place at the Imperial Examinations. 38: Juni Ba Talks ‘Djeliya’, The Experience To Celebrate Dynamic Forces CEO Nick Barrucci’s Birthday On Tonight And Tomorrow’s Shows, First Look: Blurred Lines Between Friend And Foe In ‘Power Rangers’ #7, 5 Point Discussions – Boruto: Naruto Next Generations 101: “Jugo’s Reinforcements”, Another ‘Game of Thrones’ Spinoff Is Reportedly In Development, Alan Cumming To Oppose The Doctor In An Upcoming Doctor Who Episode, SDCC 2019: Stephen Amell Says Arrow Will Have A Happy Ending Even If You Don’t Believe Him. Using his skills, he slowly replaces and upgrades Yan's mechanical body with a flexible chrome body. I could no longer transform.”. I had put together every hinge, assembled every gear, soldered every wire, welded every seam, oiled every actuator. …once a man has set his heart on a hulijing, she cannot help hearing him no matter how far apart they are…. By far my favorite episode of Love, Death, and Robots, “Good Hunting” embodies everything mature animation is capable of and elevates the entire anthology. “Tsiao-jung! “Most Honored Mister Thompson is right in every way. But then she looked at me, and her composure returned. The lady glanced at him, turned, and headed for the courtyard gate. The merchant and his wife and all the servants had been sent away. The young man’s feverish groans were pitiful. She turned and walked—no, glided—towards me, a glorious hunter, an ancient vision coming alive. I shivered. If I don’t get as far as Botou Village by sunset, I’ll be docking all of your wages.”. When she wanted, she could always turn into her true form and hunt. In Ken Liu’s Good Hunting, the young hulijing tells her mother’s perspective as the “Other.” Then the young protagonist son responds, communicating what he was taught. “What happened?”, “He felt the magic leave us, much as you. Synopsis: “Good Hunting” is a steampunk fantasy tale of individual adaptability and resistance in a time of historical transformations. I hadn’t seen Yan since that day six years ago, when we hid from the railroad surveyors at the temple. Ken Liu (Liu Yukun) was born in 1976 in Lanzhou China. Good Hunting by Ken Liu. I wondered if the time I spent learning the chants and the sword dance moves were wasted. Hundreds of miniature pneumatic actuators were hidden under the smooth chrome skin, each of which could be controlled independently, allowing her to adopt any expression. I nodded. “What are you talking about?”. I took pride in the way I could squeeze more power out of my machines than dreamed of by their designers. Half moon. Father is worried about money.”. “Not so great,” she said. Instead of answering, Yan perked up her ears and listened intently. And if I stuck around, perhaps my heart would grow heavy and yearn to be still too. “Do you think she really will come?” I whispered. I was selected to serve Mr. Findlay Smith in his new venture. "Good Hunting," a short story, was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix 's Love, Death & Robots series in 2019. “We have to save him.”, “Bewitched? Truth be told, I was relieved. After a few quick turns, I had the thing cornered in one of the monks’ cells. Maybe Yan had warned them all away. There must be doctors—”, “No,” she interrupted me. The most recent projects include “The Message,” under development by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment; “Good Hunting,” adapted as an epis. Review of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu A long time coming doesn’t seem to quite sum it up. Half moon. “Girls like you shouldn’t tease,” another man said, and laughed. Then I heard a loud crash and a collective gasp from the men in the main hall. The back of the temple was overgrown with weeds and the wall half-collapsed. By far my favorite episode of Love, Death, and Robots, “Good Hunting” embodies everything mature animation is capable of and elevates the entire anthology. “You’re a very brave boy.” A scent, like jasmine blooming in spring rain, surrounded me. “It’s the night of the Ghost Festival,” she said. A man can fall in love with a hulijing just like he can with any human woman.”, I didn’t know what to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind. In his hand was Swallow Tail, a sword that had first been forged by our ancestor, General Lau Yip, thirteen generations ago. “Most Honored Mister Thompson.” A man dressed like a mandarin came up to the foreigner. The story begins with a pair of Chinese demon hunters, a father and son, chasing down a hulijing, a shape-shifting fox spirit. ‘Good Will Hunting’, released in 1997, over twenty years ago is a film that I have gone back to again and again throughout the years since I grew up with it in a way. “He’s not even nineteen. I broke my cheekbones and cut my face so that I could stagger into surgeons’ offices and learn from them how to repair these injuries. “So I come to you, Liang. Young men in the village began to leave for Hong Kong or Canton, moved by rumors of bright lights and well-paying work. Slowly, I inched my head out from behind the buddha so I could see. “It will certainly be cheaper than hiring a real engineer from England.”. “You did not steal the idea from an Englishman?” his tone was severe. She sat down in the only chair in the room, the dim light bulb casting dark shadows on her face. But I remembered how the merchant and his wife had come to Father to ask for his help. It’s been too long.”. I pulled her into my tiny flat, looked around to be sure no one was following her, and closed the door. “I think magic is being drained out of this land.”. Voice actors include Elaine Tan, Matt Yang King, Gwendeline Yeo, Maddox Henry, Sumalee Montano, and JB Blanc. I blinked. “Don’t just stand there, Liang!” Father called. I shuddered, worried if I would have the courage to face one. The two men stepped away to get in line for the Peak Tram, muttering curses. I ran at her, dragging my clay pot filled with dog piss. Suddenly, I realized that my hands and arms were wrapped around the nude body of a young girl about my age. “That’s not what I want.”. After what happened to her mother, Yan stayed away from chicken coops, but she still missed their taste. The story lays out the transition from magic to machinery beautifully. But the soot from the locomotive chimneys killed the rice in the fields closest to the tracks, and two children playing on the tracks, too frightened to move, were killed one afternoon. “Not the same? It’s what gives the villages prosperity and maintains the rare animals and local spirits and household gods. “No.” She put the rest of the chicken on the ground and whispered a prayer to her mother. We spent every evening and all of Sundays working: shaping metal, polishing gears, reattaching wires. “Nothing,” I said, locking eyes with her. “Did anyone speak of needing our help?” he would ask. Her tight western-style cheongsam and the garish makeup told me her profession. The fox squirmed under me. The steam engine inside her had warmed her cold metal body, and it felt warm and alive. “I had a choice: let him keep on changing me to suit him, or he could remove the legs and throw me out on the street. Men from distant provinces came to inquire about buying land for cheap. Even hauntings by suicides with unfinished business are down. Use the HTML below. “I just know it’s not the same.”, She smirked. Liang uses his skills with automata to build his love a new body that can shape-shift into her fox-form. There, in the courtyard, was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen. I was surprised to see how sad she looked. Determined to redeem myself in my father’s eyes, I swallowed my fear and ran after it without hesitation. She lifted her head to the moon and howled: it was a howl made by steam passing through brass piping, and yet it reminded me of that wild howl long ago, when I first heard the call of a hulijing. Father and I crouched behind the scholar’s rock in the courtyard. Sentient A.I. He had pulled the sword free. I paused to let my gaze follow the tracks going up the steep side of the mountain. I wanted to survive. “Good Hunting” is set in Hong Kong during the height of European imperialism. Father jumped out from behind the rock and rushed at her with Swallow Tail. He foresaw that the path of technological progress would lead inevitably to the use of steam power to operate automata: mechanical arms and legs that would eventually replace the Chinese coolies and servants. “No,” I would say, trying to keep my tone light. So I swallowed the pain and let him continue.”. I bent down to look closer: the cylindrical joints at the knees were lathed with precision, the pneumatic actuators along the thighs moved in complete silence, the feet were exquisitely molded and shaped, the surfaces smooth and flowing. On the streets of Kowloon, we bought pastries and fruits and cold dumplings and a steamed chicken and incense and paper money, and caught up on each other’s lives. “The land has channels along rivers, hills, ancient roads that carry the energy of qi. 5 stars – magical, emotional and poignant, Ken Liu managed to hit really hard in just 15 pages. 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