Bear

Bear is not a speaking character but a recurring animal presence whose changing uses expose the material and moral costs of survival. In the northern chapters, bears are hunted for food and medicine, their bodies help sustain A'Zi's treatment, and the pursuit of one becomes entangled with a clash between Jurchen and Khitan people. Elsewhere, the threat of a lion being tested against an iron mask shows how animals can also become instruments of human cruelty.## Appearance and Place in the Story The evidence presents bears chiefly as black bears inhabiting the northern mountains and forests. Their tracks are legible in the muddy ground, and their thick fur, fat, paws, and gall are valued by hunters. This attention to specific parts of the animal makes the bear both a living quarry and a store of resources in a difficult environment.

The bear's narrative role differs from that of the fish A'Zhu spears for amusement. A'Zhu's repeated thrusts kill six fish without any purpose of eating them, prompting the fisherman to rebuke her for needless cruelty. By contrast, the Jurchen hunt is described in terms of food and useful materials, and Xiao Feng's later bear hunt aims to obtain medicine for A'Zi. The contrast does not erase the animals' vulnerability, but it distinguishes instrumental use from killing for sport.## Hunting in the Northern Mountains When AguDa invites Xiao Feng to join a party hunting bears in the North Mountains, he explains that a bear's thick fur, plentiful fat, and prized paws make it valuable, while its gall is considered effective for injuries. Xiao Feng accepts because A'Zi has improved enough for him to leave her temporarily, and the party sets out before sunrise.

The pursuit unfolds through early-summer mud rather than winter snow. By noon, an old hunter spots a large footprint pressed several inches into the ground; its depth makes the trail easy to follow, and the Jurchens hurry after it. The tracks lead west out of the muddy forest and onto a grass plain. There, a black bear is running ahead of a large group of mounted Khitans, armed with spears and bows. A hunt has suddenly become a border confrontation: the bear is caught between human parties whose political and ethnic hostility quickly eclipses the original pursuit.## Medicine and Xiao Feng's Care for A'Zi Bear gall acquires a second significance through Xiao Feng's care for A'Zi. Her serious injuries, mistakenly caused by his palm force, have improved with daily ginseng but remain unresolved after a long period. AguDa proposes a Jurchen remedy for external injuries, combining tiger tendon, tiger bone, and bear gall. Xiao Feng makes a paste from the tiger ingredients and gives it to her, then goes alone into remote mountains to seek the missing gall.

He fails to find a bear on the first day and kills one on the second. After removing its gall, he returns to camp and gives it to A'Zi. The account emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining this treatment: mountain ginseng is exceptionally valuable, and obtaining bear gall regularly would be beyond the means of even a wealthy family. Xiao Feng's ability to hunt and gather the ingredients makes sustained care possible where ordinary medical prescribing could not. The bear's body is thus drawn into the practical work of nursing A'Zi, in a relationship shaped by need rather than spectacle.## Human Violence and Animal Instrumentality The hunt's interruption makes the bear part of a larger pattern in which animals and people alike are exposed to force. As the Khitan riders advance, the Jurchens retreat under arrow fire; an old Jurchen hunter is killed, and more members of the hunting party fall as the fighting continues. Xiao Feng tries to prevent the clash from becoming a massacre, first disarming Khitans without killing them and then deciding that capturing their commander may be the only way to stop both sides from killing one another. The bear itself recedes from the account, but its pursuit has brought the two groups together at the point where the animal hunt becomes human warfare.

Elsewhere, animal life is made subject to a different kind of power. A'Zi orders You TanZhi to put his head into a lion's cage so that the lion can bite his iron mask as a test of its strength. The episode concerns a lion, not a bear, but it clarifies the novel's broader pattern: animals are repeatedly placed in human schemes as resources, prey, or instruments. The bear's appearances are more closely associated with subsistence and healing, while the caged lion is used to threaten and humiliate a captive servant. In both cases, the animal's presence reveals what people believe they are entitled to make other living beings endure.## Significance Bear links daily survival to the consequences of conflict. Its value as meat and medicine arises from the material demands of life in the north, and its gall becomes one component of Xiao Feng's prolonged effort to care for A'Zi. Yet hunting does not take place outside politics: the pursuit on the grass plain draws Jurchen and Khitan parties into a deadly encounter, while the bear remains vulnerable amid their struggle.

The animal's recurring instrumental uses also provide a contrast for the story's treatment of human violence. The hunters pursue the bear for food and useful products; the soldiers, by contrast, turn their weapons on people caught at the border. The narrative does not claim that these acts are identical, but it makes animal bodies part of the same practical world in which survival, care, and domination meet. Bear is therefore more than incidental quarry: its presence connects the ecology of the northern setting with the human costs of warfare and the labor of healing.