Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Songling Pu

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio is the collection of tales of the supernatural that Pu Songling, a schoolteacher who failed the imperial examinations again and again, wrote in the late seventeenth century. Fox spirits take the form of beautiful women, a painted wall admits a visitor into its own world, a demon wears a painted skin, Taoist priests work small miracles, the dead return and the living are judged in the courts of the underworld, all told with a scholar's economy and a sly humor. This first of two volumes presents Herbert Allen Giles's translation of 1880, with his introduction on the author and the author's own preface. It is the classic Chinese book of ghost stories. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.