Line 11 Seeking not beauty of sound: In The Book of Songs, in one of the Praise Odes of the State of Lu, 'beauteous sounds' are made by the owls in the mulberry trees. According to the traditional didactic interpretation, which would have been standard in Pu Songling's day, the birds are straining to beautify their ugly screeching in order to express their praise of the newly founded college of Lu. By contrast, Pu Songling is seeking to hear (and utter) a sound that arises from within, not one designed to please conventional tastes.

Lines 1213 But music... of its own: Pu Songling is thinking in Taoist terms. The music must be of itself. We sing the song that we sing because we are what we are.

Line 14 My desolate autumn firefly: The feeble firefly's light is a cliche for a man's humble efforts and lowly station in life, compared with the grand achievements of his more famous contemporaries.

Line 15 Is eclipsed by goblins: A reference to Xi Kang (22362), celebrated musician and alchemist and one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, that wonderful congeries of medieval Chinese eccentrics (men no doubt after Pu Songling's own heart). Many anecdotes tell of Xi Kang's encounters with spirits while playing his lute. In one he is sitting alone at night, strumming his lute, when suddenly a man more than ten feet tall, clad in black cloth and a leather belt, walks in. Xi Kang looks at him and blows out his lamp, saying, 'How could I venture to emulate the light of a goblin!' (For more on Xi Kang and the Seven Sages, see Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, I, pp. 45667.) Line 16 My insatiable speck of dust: The unusual word didi (insatiable) is taken from The Book of Changes, where it is used to describe the craving of a tiger (Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes (trans.), I Ching (New York, 1950), p. 110). Pu Songling seems to be referring to his obsessive and yet consistently unsuccessful attempts to pass the examinations. The 'speck of dust' is another reference to The Book of Zhuangzi, Chapter 1, 'Free and Easy Wandering'.

Line 17 Is mocked by trolls: The two words Pu Songling chooses for his goblins and trolls can be traced back to an episode in the Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, the first (probably third century BC) work of sustained narrative in the Chinese language and certainly one of the Strange Tales' earliest ancestors. Strange Tales is strewn with references to it.

All the objects were represented [on the tripods], and instructions were given for the preparations to be made in reference to them, so that people might know the sprites and evil things. Thus the people, when they went among the rivers, marshes, hills and forests, did not meet with the injurious things, and the trolls, monstrous things, and goblins, did not meet with them. Hereby a harmony was secured between the high and the low, and all enjoyed the blessing of Heaven.

(Adapted from James Legge (trans.), The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Hong Kong, 186172), V, p. 293) The Zuo Commentary itself certainly did not shrink from recording the strange and the supernatural. It is one of the earliest repositories of such accounts. A single episode (dated to the year 680 BC) illustrates this direct line of descent from the Zuo Commentary to the Tales: Snakes living within the city and those from outside had engaged in battle in the middle of the southern gate to the capital of Zheng. The snakes living within the city died. Six years later, Duke Li of Zheng returned to the capital. When Duke Zhuang of Lu heard of this, he questioned his minister Shen Xu about it, saying: 'Are there really such things as portents?' Shen replied: 'When people have something they are deeply distressed about, their vital energy flames up and takes such shapes. Portents arise because of people. If people have no dissensions, they will not arise of themselves. When men abandon their constant ways, then portents arise...'

(Burton Watson (trans.), The Tso Chuan (New York, 1989), pp. 2078) Pu Songling is also alluding here to a story given in the Annals of the South (a historical work of the Tang dynasty, 618907), about a mandarin by the name of Liu Bolong, who, when reduced to poverty and determined to improve his circumstances by engaging in commerce, sees a troll standing by his side, laughing and rubbing his hands in glee. 'Poverty and wealth are matters of destiny,' reflects Liu aloud. 'But to be mocked by a troll...' As a consequence he abandons his plans. (The troll's laughter echoes the Confucian contempt towards merchants.) Lines 1821 My talents pale... weird spirits: Gan Bao (fl. 320), prominent official and historian, is credited with having compiled one of the earliest and most widely read and imitated medieval collections of Weird Accounts, entitled In Search of Spirits (see Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, I, pp. 65165).

Lines 225 My mood mirrors... strange tales: Su Dongpo (1037-1101), the great poet of the Song dynasty, was fond of ghost stories and wrote his own. This shared love of strange tales is referred to in an exchange of poems between the eminent statesman Wang Shizhen and Pu Songling, dating from 1689, ten years after this Preface.

Wang wrote to 'his friend Pu Songling, Teller of Tales': Bean arbour, gourd trellis, silken rain; Idle words, idly spoken, idly heard Like Su the Poet and Teller of Tales, Of whom we are both so fond!

The world's debates disdained; We loved to hear the songs of ghosts, Issuing from the graves of autumn.

Pu Songling replied: Threadbare gown, grey head, silken hair; Now my Book of Tales is done An idle jest to share!

Ten years have I tasted the joys Of Su the Teller of Tales and Poet Of whom we are both so fond!

Nocturnal conversations, Cold rain, Illuminated by a lamp of autumn.

(Zhang Youhe (1962), p. 34) Actually we know that his 'Book of Tales' was far from 'done' in 1689. It seems that such was Pu Songling's love of the project, he just kept on adding new items until he was a very old man.

Lines 3032 The matter... grown into a pile: Herbert Giles comments, quoting from The World on Charles Dickens (24 July 1878): 'And his friends had the habit of jotting down for his unfailing delight anything quaint or comic that they came across' (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, 2nd edn (London, 1908), p. xiii, note 13).

Lines 335 Here in the civilized world... Country of Cropped Hair: The Historical Records of Sima Qian (c. 145c. 85 BC) records that among the 'southern savages' (the then outlandish tribes of southern China) there were men with tattooed bodies and short-cropped hair. Such strange place-names are also to be found throughout The Book of Hills and Seas (probably third or second century BC). But Pu Songling can see 'strangeness' all around him. Judith T. Zeitlin comments: 'The cultural categories of strange and familiar, barbarian and civilized, are destabilized and inverted; the "geography of the imagination" has been relocated to the here and now, shifted back to the center. The point is that the strange is not other; the strange resides in our midst. The strange is inseparable from us' (Historian of the Strange, p. 47).

Lines 368 Before our very eyes... Flying Heads: A fabulous community, so called because heads were in the habit of leaving their bodies and flying down to marshy places to feed on worms and crabs. A red ring was seen the night before the flight, encircling the neck of the man whose head was about to fly; with the appearance of daylight, the head returned. Some said that the ears were used as wings; others that the hands also left the body and flew away. (Adapted from Giles, Strange Stories, p. xiii, note 15.) The story occurs in several early sources, including Notes from Youyang, a collection of accounts of curious and marvellous phenomena compiled by Duan Chengshi (c. 800c. 863), who 'collected reports on the unseen or supernal worlds from persons who claimed expert knowledge of such places; for instance, he recorded a detailed description of the jewelled surface of the moon, transmitted by a mysterious visitor to the earth' (Edward H. Schafer, in Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. William Nienhauser (Bloomington, 1986), p. 940). Clearly Duan was another man after Pu Songling's own heart.

Lines 3941 My irrepressible transports... cannot be gainsaid: A quotation from the 'Preface for Prince Teng's Pavilion', a much-admired and much-anthologized lyrical essay in elaborate parallel prose written by Wang Bo (c. 650c. 676). It celebrates 'a superlative feast' given one autumn day on the estate of a local official in the southern city of Nanchang, in a pavilion named after the Prince of Teng: Our joyous songs wafted over the hills, our unfettered rapture [my italics] soared through the air. A pure breeze arose to the lively Music of Nature; white clouds loitered to the filigree strains of melody... As Heaven spread above us in its height, Earth lay below us in its immensity, we sensed the vast infinity of the Universe; as rapture came to an end and sorrow took its place, we knew the fated succession of contraries.

(My translation, based on Richard Strassberg, Inscribed Landscapes (Berkeley, 1994)) Lines 424 My far-soaring ideas... cannot be denied: In Redefining History: Ghosts, Spirits and Human Society in P'u Sung-ling's World, 16401715 (Ann Arbor, 1998), Chun-shu Chang and Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang see in this a reference to the poet of ecstasy, Li Bo (70162).

Lines 479 Just as the tale... can tell: This refers to a 'tale' about Confucius (551479 BC) and the burial of his mother. Confucius, who should properly have buried his mother in his father's grave, did not know the exact location of the grave and buried her instead at a place known as Five-Fathers Crossroad. Many scholars have chosen to regard this as 'baseless'. How could the great sage Confucius not have known the whereabouts of his father's burial place! But others consider it to be authentic, in view of the uncommon circumstances in which Confucius' father had married his mother (he was already over seventy years old and had nine daughters but only one son, a cripple). Still others have held that there is some profound hidden meaning behind the story regardless of its authenicity. (For more details, see the annotations in Chang and Chang's Redefining History.) Pu Songling uses this example to show the relative nature and possible shades of truth of so-called absurd stories.

Lines 5052 The tale of Three-Lives Rock... enlightenment: The Three Lives are the previous, present and future. According to certain Buddhist schools of thinking, three rebirths are the minimum necessary to reach enlightenment: one for the planting of the seed, one for the ripening, and one for harvesting and liberation. The rock might be better named the Rock of Reincarnation. The tale referred to here is one of hundreds contained in the vast Taiping Compendium, compiled from 475 different sources in the early Song dynasty, in the years 9778. A glance at the Compendium's range of subjects shows a striking resemblance with Strange Tales: 'Taoist arts, feats of magic, Buddhist tales of reward and retribution (karma), omens, predestination, unusual officials and heroes, strange talents and arts, divination, tricks and jokes, immoral acts, dreams, ghosts and apparitions, oddities and grotesques, strange plants, animals and minerals, strange countries' (Edward H. Schafer, in Sung Bibliography (Hong Kong, 1978), p. 341). Of course, the Compendium differs enormously from Pu Songling's work in that it is not the work of one hand but an encyclopedic ragbag of existing materials.

The story referred to, often retold by later writers, goes like this. A monk predicts his reincarnation to his friend, and when they meet again, twelve years later, on a hillside near the southern town of Hangzhou, the monk (now reborn as a boy riding a buffalo) is singing a song which begins with the words 'Here at the Rock of Three Lives, the same old soul...'

Lines 536 My wild words... Who utters them: See Confucian Analects, XV, 22: 'The superior man does not promote a man simply on account of his words, nor does he put aside good words because of the man.'

Line 59 And the bow hung at his door: According to ancient ritual, at the birth of a boy a wooden bow was suspended to the left of the door. Here the Preface changes to the autobiographical mode.

Line 67 A black patch: In other words, the child was the reincarnation of the Buddha. 'Black patch' can also be taken to mean Ink Records. The tales themselves are predestined.

Line 81 He who sat with his face to the wall: According to legend, the founder of Zen Buddhism, the Indian Bodhidharma, 'a fierce-looking fellow with a bushy beard and wide-open, penetrating eyes', is reputed to have arrived in China around AD 520. (See, for example, Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (London, 1957), p. 85.) When his doctrine was not at first accepted by Emperor Wu of Liang, he withdrew to a monastery (some say to the Shaolin Temple near Luoyang) where he sat for many years in meditation facing a wall. Here Pu Songling is referring to the Buddha or Buddhist monk who visited his father in a dream.

Line 83 Surely stems from obstacles and delusions: Delusion, klesa, is the affliction of troubled passion, the hindrance to enlightenment caused by negative human emotions such as distress, worry, anxiety, desire and fear. Bodhidharma was once asked by Emperor Wu what merit the Emperor had acquired by promoting Buddhism in practical ways, for example by building temples. 'None whatsoever!' replied Bodhidharma, going on to say that such outward acts of devotion still carried within them the seeds of delusion and karma, and that true merit could only be achieved by meditation.

Lines 8690 I have been blown... in the cesspit: Pu Songling, in characteristically ambivalent fashion, switches from Buddhism to its opponents, here alluding to a well-known critic of the Buddhist doctrine of karma, Fan Zhen (c. 4 50c. 515), author of the controversial Treatise on the Extinction of the Soul. A conversation between Fan and his patron, the devoutly Buddhist Prince of Jingling, is recorded in the Annals of the Liang Dynasty (AD 636). 'If you do not believe in the process of karma,' asked the Prince, 'how do you account for the disparities that exist between wealth and poverty, rank and misery?' Fan Zhen's reply includes many of the words used here by Pu Songling: Human life is like the flowers on a tree. Many branches grow on one tree. They all produce blossoms which fall where the wind blows them, some brushing against woven bamboo screens and falling on soft mats, some driven against walls and falling in cesspits. The former are fortunate men of rank (such as Your Highness), the latter unfortunate commoners (such as myself). What does karma have to do with these different paths?

Fan's own philosophy was a Taoist one: Creation is a gift of nature, the infinite patterns of which evolve of themselves. Impalpably there is being of itself, and imperceptibly there is no longer being. When we come it is not because we cause being to come, and when we go it is not because we drive being away. We do but ride upon the principle of Heaven, and should each act in accordance with our own nature. Let lesser folk find sweetness in their cultivated acres, and let superior men preserve their quiet simplicity...

(Based on Fung Yulan (Feng Youlan), A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde, 2 vols. (Princeton, 19523), II, pp. 2912.) Lines 913 The Six Modes of Transmigration... of their own: The Six Modes of Transmigration are the six modes of the Wheel of Rebirth. We are back with Buddhism. Fung Yulan (Feng Youlan) writes: The deeds or karma of each sentient being in successive past existences determine what he is to be in existences still to come. These rebirths take place on several different levels [modes]: that of the beings in the various hells, of animals, of human beings, of the divine beings in the various heavens... In their totality they constitute the wheel of life and death.

(A History of Chinese Philosophy, II, p. 237) Line 101 To The Infernal Regions: The title of a no-longer-extant collection of tales of the supernatural attributed to Liu Yiqing (40344). Liu was also the author of New Accounts of Tales of the World (see Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, I, pp. 66573).

Lines 1045 My spleen... lonely anguish: Here Pu Songling aligns himself with two great writers of the past: Han Feizi (d. 233 BC) and Sima Qian, the Grand Historian, author of the Historical Records, both of whom professed to write out of 'spleen'. In his chapter entitled 'Spleen', Han Feizi 'laments the iniquity of the age in general, and the corruption of officials in particular. He finally committed suicide in prison, where he had been cast by the intrigues of a rival minister.' (See Giles, Strange Stories, p. xv, note 31.) Line 115 Those who know me: His true friends. See Confucian Analects, XIV: 'Alas! There is no one who knows me [for what I am].'

Lines 11618 Are in the green grove... At the dark frontier: In a famous poem Du Fu (71270) dreamed that he saw Li Bo (70162) appear to him, 'coming when the maple-grove was still green, and returning while the frontier was dark'. That is to say, during the night, when no one could see him; the meaning being that he never came at all, and that those who 'know' Pu Songling are equally non-existent. In Historian of the Strange (p. 51), Zeitlin writes: 'His true readers [and his true friends] are wraiths, disembodied spirits, inhabiting the shadowy world of the dead and of dream; it is the writer who is alive and alone, crying out for someone to understand him.'

Glossary

Note: This informal glossary has been provided in the hope that more general readers might like some background on a few of the terms that recur throughout Strange Tales. It does not pretend to be either scholarly or original.

Academician Normally this title would imply membership of the elite Hanlin Academy.

alchemy Inner or Spiritual Alchemy (neidan) is a branch of Taoist self-cultivation using the terminology of Outer or Physical Alchemy (waidan), for self-cultivation and development. It has a certain resemblance to Carl Jung's definition of psychic alchemy in the Western tradition, as the 'transformation of the personality through the merging and blending together of the noble and base elements, the conscious and the unconscious' (quoted by Colin Wilson, The Occult (New York, 1971), p. 249; see also Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 22 vols. (Cambridge, 1954 ), vol. 5, part 5, section 33, 'Physiological Alchemy', pp. 220).

ancestors and ancestral, or spirit, tablets Small wooden boards on which the names and titles of the deceased are inscribed. The soul of the ancestor is widely believed to linger in the tablet, which in wealthier families is placed in a special shrine. (See Wolfram Eberhard, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols (London, 1986), p. 18.) bedsteads Since beds play such an important part in Strange Tales, it is worth pointing out that traditional Chinese bedsteads were large, curtained, live-in structures, somewhat like Western four-poster beds. Some of them even had antechambers. The great German authority on Chinese furniture, Gustav Ecke, refers to them as 'veritable alcove architecture' (Chinese Domestic Furniture (Peking, 1944), p. 8). Another authority, the American George Kates, calls them 'rooms within rooms': 'When the bed's curtains were drawn it formed a completely isolated sleeping unit, equipped with all necessaries, not altogether unlike a modern railway compartment' (Chinese Household Furniture (New York, 1948), pp. 478 ).

Benevolence and Filial Piety Benevolence, ren, has also been translated as Humanity, Altruism or True Manhood. Filial Piety, xiao, has sometimes been translated as Filial Submission. They were two key ethical terms in Confucian thought. In the first section of the Confucian Analects, the great sage says, 'Filial Piety and Brotherly Respect are the root of Benevolence.' When asked to define what he meant by Filial Piety, he replied, 'Never disobey [your parents].' It was this oppressive weight of obedience, respect and reverence towards parents and ancestors that was later so severely criticized and held to blame for Confucian conservatism and authoritarianism.

Board The traditional Chinese civil service was divided into six Boards or Ministries: Civil Office, Revenue, Works, Rites, War and Justice.

Bodhisattva A being destined for enlightenment who nonetheless postpones his or her own nirvana to save others. Guan Yin, often referred to in English as the Goddess of Mercy or Compassion, is in reality a Chinese female transformation of a male Bodhisattva.

bolus Traditional name for the large pill used in traditional Chinese medicine, often containing several herbal ingredients.

bound feet The tiny feet of Chinese women, mutilated in childhood and wrapped tightly in bandages for the rest of their life, were known euphemistically as Golden Lotuses. Although the custom seems more than strange to Western readers, it does not feature as an observed oddity in Pu Songling's Tales. To his fellow Chinese literati, bound feet were taken for granted, indeed they were greatly appreciated and much eulogized. When young ladies in the Tales are observed to hobble with some difficulty along the highway, it would be assumed automatically that they did so because their feet were bound.

bow, with clasped hands (gongshou) This form of salutation is often referred to in passing in the Tales. It involves raising the joined hands (concealed in sleeves, the fingers of the right hand enclosing those of the left, the thumbs meeting in front) to the forehead, mouth or chin, according to the degree of respect to be shown, and making at the same time a slight inclination of the head, as a salute. (Based on Gilbert W. Walshe, Ways That Are Dark (Shanghai, 1906), p. 48.) Buddhism The third of the three Chinese religions, and the only one of foreign extraction. See also Dharma.

cap, mandarin This distinctive item of clothing, made of silk, was a little like the traditional Western university don's mortar-board, but with protruding 'antennae' on each side.

cards (visiting cards) Strips of red paper, about seven inches long by three and a quarter broad, bearing the name of the person, and used for formal visits. The servant goes on ahead to announce his master's arrival to the gate-keeper, and to present his master's card, which is taken in and given to another servant. The visitor is carried through several courtyards as far as the first closed gate, where he remains seated in his chair, supported by his bearers, until a servant appears from within, holding the visitor's card aloft in his hand and inviting the guest to enter with the word 'Qing!' (Based on Walshe, Ways That Are Dark, p. 47.) catty (jin) The Chinese 'pound', a basic measure of weight, equivalent to approx. 1.3 British pounds.

censors (yushi, duchayuan) These all-important officials (both metropolitan and local) were given as part of their enormous powers the 'responsibility of maintaining disciplinary surveillance over the whole of officialdom, checking records and auditing accounts in government offices, accepting public complaints, and impeaching officials who in their private or public lives violated the law or otherwise conducted themselves improperly' (Charles Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford, 1985), p. 592).

Cinnabar, and Cinnabar Field (dantian) Cinnabar is the most important substance used in Taoist alchemy, and is the 'elixir' which the Taoist adept distils through his various practices. In Outer Alchemy, purified Cinnabar was claimed to confer actual immortality, while in Inner Alchemy, Cinnabar represented the energy of combined Yin and Yang kindled in the Cinnabar Field, the tripartite (upper, middle and lower) mid-region of the human body (the lower abdomen, three inches below the navel) through which the vital energy qi flows. The lower Cinnabar Field is of particular importance in connection with Taoist practices aimed at the prolongation of life, because here not only energy in a general sense but more specifically a man's semen and a woman's menstrual flow are accumulated. 'It is the root of the human being. Here men keep their semen and women their menstrual blood. It houses the gate of harmonious union of Yin and Yang... It is called the Palace-that-keeps-the-Essence.' (Based on Kristofer Schipper, The Taoist Body (Berkeley, 1993), pp 1529. See also Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, The Shambhala Dictionary of Taoism (Boston, 1996), pp. 16062.) Cold Food Festival Falls on the day before the annual ancestral Qing Ming Festival, which is usually around 5 April. Nothing hot is eaten, and no fires are permitted for cooking, out of respect for the dead.

Confucianism and neo-Confucianism This State ideology pervaded Chinese society from the Han dynasty (second century BC) until the early twentieth century. Based loosely on the teachings of Confucius (551479 BC) and his foremost disciples and successors, it placed social cohesion and loyalty to ancestors, father and Emperor above all other considerations. This was often in conflict with the more subversive and consciousness-centred beliefs of Taoism and Buddhism, but over the years the Confucianists exhibited a remarkable knack for absorbing and co-opting their own 'opposition'.

congee Thin rice gruel popular in many parts of East Asia.

county, department, district The basic administrative units of the provinces were in ascending order: county (xian, sometimes called district), department (zhou), sub-prefecture (ting), prefecture (fu), circuit (dao) and province (sheng). There were hierarchies of magistrates at all levels.

degrees and examinations Pu Songling frequently refers in his tales to the Chinese bureaucracy, and to the ancient and elaborate system of examinations and degrees, of which he himself had fallen victim what Ichisada Miyazaki calls China's Examination Hell (New Haven, 1981). This system was virtually the only channel for success and status in society and for recognition in the intellectual community. The following is a greatly simplified sketch of how things worked (and continued to work until the abolition of the system in 1905), to help readers of the Tales.

There were three principal stages. The first consisted of the local or district examination, which took place every year in each prefectural city, producing the graduates of the first degree, xiucai, literally 'budding talent'. (This was as far as Pu Songling ever rose, despite his extraordinary abilities.) Next came the provincial examination, which was held triennially at the provincial capital, lasted nine days and produced the graduates of the second degree, juren, literally 'elevated men'. The third examination, the metropolitan examination, was held triennially in Peking during the third month of the year after the provincial examinations, and was followed a month later by the palace examination, dianshi, out of which emerged the creme de la creme, the holders of the third degree, jinshi, literally 'advanced scholar'. The three degrees are sometimes approximately referred to in English (e.g. by Herbert Giles) as the Bachelor's, Master's and Doctor's degrees. All the examinations stressed classical literary knowledge and the ability to write formal compositions in eight sections, the so-called Eight-Legged Essays or Octopartites.

Sometimes Pu Songling's purpose in depicting the system is satirical, sometimes it is no more than a reflection of what was a universal experience of every educated Chinese gentleman. In the words of the historian Etienne Balazs, China was, and still is in many ways, a 'permanently bureacratic society' (Chinese Civilisation and Bureaucracy (New Haven, 1964)).

Dharma At once the Buddhist Doctrine and Universal Law, which are held by Buddhists to be two aspects of the same thing. The essence of Dharma was considered to be the Chain of Causation, the Wheel of Rebirth, from which Buddhism aimed to set men free. Gautama Buddha taught the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths: (1) that suffering exists; (2) that its cause is thirst, craving or desire; (3) that there is an overcoming of suffering through (4) the self-training or self-cultivation of the Noble Eightfold Path.

door-curtains Sometimes called 'portieres', this feature of Chinese interiors can often be seen depicted in the illustrations included in this volume.

dragons One of the supreme symbols of Chinese culture. Whereas the Western dragon is often the primordial enemy, combat with which is the ultimate test of virtue, the Chinese dragon is essentially an auspicious and spiritual beast, embodying cosmic energy and representing the Yang principle. It is also a symbol of power, and associated with the Emperor.

dreams The identification of dreams with actual excursions of the souls of dreamers is general in China. When the soul of a dreamer is out of his body, it may travel in a short time over enormous distances. (Based on J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, 6 vols. (Leiden, 18921910), IV, p. 118.) elixir The alchemical elixir of immortality, the Inner Cinnabar.

energy (qi) The word, which occurs throughout Strange Tales, has many possible translations in addition to 'energy': spirit, force, atmosphere, tone, manner, aura, breath, pneuma (this last is Joseph Needham's idea). There is a qi of Heaven (in modern usage, tianqi means 'weather'), and a qi of Earth; a qi of morning and a qi of evening; a qi of spring and a qi of autumn. There is a Yin qi and a Yang qi (their interaction can reinforce or diminish each other). In my home district of France, just north of the Pyrenees, the Yin qi is clearly visible when the mists come in from the sea (the wind known as the 'Marin'), bringing with them humidity and rain, and the Yang qi can be sensed in the air the instant the wind blows from the hills to the north (the 'Tramontane', known in Provence further east as the 'Mistral'), dispersing the clouds and bringing sun and clear blue skies.

The Tao is made manifest in qi. Zhang Jingyue, in The Contents of the Classic of Internal Medicine Arranged by Subject (1624), gives some idea of the all pervasive nature of qi: Change, both inception and transformation, rests on qi, and there is no being in the Cosmos that does not originate from it. Thus qi envelops the Cosmos from without and moves the Cosmos from within. How else than by qi can the sun and moon, the planets and the fixed stars shine, can thunder resound and rain, wind and clouds be formed, can all things rise, mature, bear fruit, and withdraw in the Course of the Four Seasons? Man's existence too depends entirely upon this qi.

But perhaps an anecdote illustrates qi better than any explanation or list of definitions. I copied it down many years ago into a commonplace book from the Introduction to William Acker's Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang Texts on Chinese Painting (Leiden, 1954), p. xxix. It could just as easily have come from the Taoist Book of Zhuangzi, or indeed from Strange Tales: It was quite natural for the Chinese to conceive of the qi flowing about not only within the body but as flowing from body to body, or from the body into material things. In 1934 when I was in Taiyuan in Shanxi to visit the archaeological sites... I had the privilege of meeting Mr Ke Huang, then Director of the Provincial Library in that city. He is a distinguished calligrapher and I had the unusual pleasure of watching him write large characters. He stood, feet planted firmly like a fencer, before a large table, on the other side of which stood a servant who leaned across it grasping the top of a large sheet of paper. As Mr Ke wrote, humming to himself and moving the big brush about for all the world like a fencer his foil, the servant kept pulling the paper towards him, so that Mr Ke did not have to change his position. The brush he used was a large one, about four inches thick where the hairs were tied and entered the wooden handle, and I noticed that after plunging it into the ink he would dig his fingers in among the hairs of the brush instead of keeping them on the handle. I asked him why he did so, pointing out that after all it meant that he could never get his hands quite clean, since he was in the habit of writing large characters every day, and he replied that in so doing the qi flowed down through his arm and through his fingertips directly into the ink itself, and thence onto the paper where some of it would remain, animating the characters even after the ink had dried. This story provides a good illustration of how concrete and almost tangible a thing qi is in Chinese thinking.

Essay, Eight-Legged The core of the Chinese educational curriculum and the most important subject in the official examinations for nearly five hundred years. For a detailed example, and a explanation of the rhetorical mechanics of writing such things, see vol. IV of the eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone (Harmondsworth, 1982), Chapters 82 and 84, and Appendix 2 on Octopartite Composition.

eunuchs In China, when a eunuch was castrated, both penis and testicles were removed. It is surprising that eunuchs survived this at all. An interesting account of this question is by Dr Jean-Jacques Matignon, in his book La Chine Hermetique (Paris, 1898). As doctor to the French legation in Peking, Matignon once had occasion to treat a young eunuch.

fox-spirits (hulijing) The fox-spirit or 'were-vixen' has haunted the Chinese imagination until the present day. What follows are one or two notes on foxes taken from various sources. See also the relevant section in the Introduction, pp. xxixxiv.

The reason why the fox was credited with special sexual associations: must probably be sought for in the combination of two elements. First, the ancient belief in the abundant vital essence of the fox. And second, its proclivity to play pranks on man... When a fox is fifty years old, it acquires the ability to change itself into a woman. At a hundred it can assume the shape of a beautiful girl, or that of a sorcerer, or also that of an adult man who has sexual intercourse with women. At that age the fox knows what is happening at a distance of a thousand li, it can derange [bewitch] the human mind and reduce a person to an imbecile. When the fox is a thousand years old, it is in communication with Heaven, and is called the Heavenly Fox.

(Xuanzhongji, in van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden, 1961), p. 210. Compare de Groot, V, pp. 5867) The fox has always been an erotic symbol, and was sometimes associated with venereal diseases. Many stories tell how a ravishingly beautiful girl appears one night to a young scholar while he is studying, and how he makes love to her. She disappears in the early morning but comes back each evening. The scholar gets weaker and weaker until a Taoist informs him that the girl is really a fox which is sucking him dry in order to imbibe the essence of immortality. (Based on Eberhard, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, pp. 11718. See for example Tale 54, 'Lotus Fragrance'.) 'Father Mullin speaks of a shrine in Shandong of peculiar structure, with an opening so narrow that worshippers were obliged to crawl in and out on their hands and knees. Tiny women's shoes were given as offerings... The shrine was built over a spot where foxes were supposed to formerly have had their den' (Juliet Bredon and Igor Mitrophanow, The Moon Year (Shanghai, 1927), p. 417, note 9).

Nicholas Dennys writes that part of traditional fox-lore is the idea that: when crossing a frozen river or lake the fox advances very slowly and deliberately, putting his head down close to the ice and listening for the sound of water beneath... Below the ice is the region of the Yin or female element the dark world of death and obscurity while above it is the region of the Yang or male element the bright world of life and activity. Thus the fox is represented as living on the debatable land which is neither the Earth of life nor the Hades of death. His dwelling place on the earth is among the tombs, or actually, rather, within the tomb, and the spirits of the deceased often occupy his body. Thus he enables ghosts of the dead to return to life or himself performs their terrible behest visiting upon living men and women the iniquities they have committed against those now dead and by this means bringing peace and rest to the souls of the latter which would else be travelling and troubling for ever.

(The Folk-Lore of China (London, 1876), p. 94, quoting the British consular official Thomas Watters, who wrote 'Chinese Fox-Myths') ghosts (gui) In Chinese thinking, the boundary between this world and the world beyond is much more elastic than it is for us, and belief in ghosts and spirits is taken more seriously. (Based on Eberhard, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, p. 273.) See also hungry ghosts.

'Man consists of the beneficial substances that compose the Heavens and the earth, of the co-operation of the Yin and the Yang, and of the union of a gui with a shen [see soul]; he consists of the finest breath of the Five Elements... Confucius said: "The qi [see energy] is the full manifestation of the shen, and the po is the full manifestation of the gui; the union of the gui with the shen is the highest among all tenets. Living beings are all sure to die, and as they certainly return (gui) to the Earth after their death, the soul (which accompanies them thither) is called gui. But while the bones and flesh moulder in the ground and mysteriously become earth of the fields, the qi issues forth and manifests itself on high as a shining ming (light)" '(from the? third-century BC Confucian classic Li Ji or Record of Rites; see de Groot, IV, pp. 34).

Hanlin Academy Membership of the august Imperial Hanlin Academy (Hanlin means literally Forest of Pencils) was the highest literary distinction attainable in China. As an institution it sat at the pinnacle of the whole examination and civil service system, combining the functions of an Academy of Letters (the Imperial centre for Confucian scholarship and instruction of the Emperor and his family) with those of a College of Heralds. (Based on L. C. Arlington and William Lewisohn, In Search of Old Peking (Peking, 1935), p 16.) Numbers were limited to about five hundred, and the higher members were by virtue of their status advisers to the Emperor, and available for appointment to the highest offices, thus constituting an elite of the elite within the Chinese civil service system.

Heaven and Hell Buddhism believes in a horrible and ingeniously cruel series of hells or purgatories (diyu, literally 'earth-prison'), where punishment is carried out through long aeons (kalpas, jie), before the souls are purged and fit for rebirth. The sinner is sentenced by an infernal judge. In many respects the Chinese hells resemble the hells of Hinduism, but in China a note of more abject terror coupled with a refinement of torture have been introduced. (Based on Karl Ludvig Reichelt, Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism (Shanghai, 192.7), p. 82.) hungry ghosts (egui) The ghosts of those who have suffered a wrong that has not been righted. A class of beings (pretas) with tiny pin-sized heads and huge stomachs, so that, no matter how much they eat, they are in perpetual hunger. The All Souls' Feast, celebrated by Buddhists on the night of the fifteenth day of the seventh month, was for the purpose of appeasing these hungry ghosts by providing food and clothing for them. (Based on Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), p. 5, note 1.) illusion (huan) Judith T. Zeitlin, writing about Tale 6, 'The Painted Wall', remarks: Pu Songling explores the paradox implicit in the conventional Buddhist wisdom that the phenomenological world is no more than illusion. If the superior mind views everything, both real and unreal, with indifference, then any idea of illusion is eliminated as well. On the other hand, to be guided beyond illusion, images must first be conjured up, and the more seductive and puzzling the images are, the more shattering and profound enlightenment will be.

(Historian of the Strange, p. 192) This theme, a recurring one in Chinese fiction, also pervades the eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone.

Immortal (xian) A transcendent, eternally youthful being, the supreme Taoist adept, who through occult practice has mastered supernatural and magical skills, and attained physical and spiritual immortality beyond time and space.

Imperial College (guozi-jian) The highest government institute of learning, with its seat in a large group of buildings near the Temple of Confucius in the north-east corner of Peking.

incubus 'An incubus is a male demon that seeks sexual intercourse with women in their sleep; hence, a nightmare; hence a person or thing that oppresses one as does a nightmare. Etymologically, a person lying on another' (Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 314). 'The name given in the Middle Ages to a male demon which was supposed to haunt women in their sleep, and to whose visits the birth of witches and demons was attributed' (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edn, vol. 14 (1911), p. 369). Several of the Tales deal with this phenomenon (e.g. Tale 35, 'The Merchant's Son', where the incubus is a fox; Tale 78, 'The Clay Scholar' and Tale 98, 'The Southern Wutong-Spirit', where the incubus is part of a local cult).

The old Chinese sex handbooks gave advice on the consequences of intercourse with ghosts (see Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv): The after-effects of copulation with an incubus can be cured by the following method. Let the man and the woman have intercourse day and night without cease, without the man ever ejaculating. After seven days of this, the woman will be cured. If the man becomes fatigued and he cannot continue the act, then let him keep his member inside the woman, without moving it this too is good. If this disease is not treated as indicated here, the victim will die in a few years.

(From a handbook dated to the Sui dynasty (581618), based on van Gulik, Sexual Life, p. 152) karma The law according to which our thoughts, words and actions in one life produce modifications of our inner being, thus determining the exact nature and circumstances of our next incarnation, and in every way causing us to reap what we have sown and, while reaping, to sow again. (See John Blofeld, The Wheel of Life (London, 1972), p. 13.) kowtow Literally, to 'knock the head'. In Hobson-Jobson (London, 1886), Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell write: 'The salutation used in China before the Emperor, his representatives, or his symbols, made by prostrations repeated a fixed number of times, the forehead touching the ground at each prostration. It is also used as the most respectful form of salutation from children to parents, and from servants to masters on formal occasions.'

Lantern Festival The period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth of the first lunar month is called the Lantern Festival, but it is the fifteenth that is the true festival. The origin of this festival, when householders hang lanterns over their doors and put up fir branches to attract prosperity and longevity, is supposed to date from the Han dynasty. The older festival evolved through custom into an occasion of pure enjoyment. Under the Tang dynasty (618907), some Emperors, not content with looking at the illuminations of their capital from high observation towers like their predecessors, went out into the streets incognito. So did their ladies. Amorous adventures were frequent, and the carnival spirit held sway. (Based on Tun Li-ch'en, Annual Customs and Festivals (Peiping, 1936), pp. 69, and Bredon and Mitrophanow, The Moon Year, pp. 1334.) literati (wenren) See scholars and students.

luck (fu) A man born into this world is supposed to have a definite quantity of luck, or predestined happiness, awarded to him for his enjoyment. Some people have more than others. A man whose children die young, or a man who has a beautiful country home but is unable to live in it, is said to have 'no luck to enjoy them'. On the other hand, a man who enjoys too much, or who enjoys inordinately, or enjoys what is not appropriate, as, for instance, receiving a kowtow from an elderly gentleman older than himself, is said to 'curtail his luck' or shorten his life. (Based on Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (London, 1938), p. 448.) Manchu dynasty See Qing dynasty.

palanquins, sedan-chairs The palanquin was the superior (i.e. larger) version of the customary mode of transportation used by upper-class Chinese in traditional times, sometimes described as 'a box-litter'. It is a Portuguese form of a Hindi word, and it was in use throughout India, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and China. Sedan-chair is the word used for the simpler single-seater, carried by two bearers. There were rules for how many bearers a palanquin could have: sixteen for the Emperor, eight for a Prince of the Blood or a very high-ranking official, four for lesser officials.

piba-mandolin A Chinese musical instrument with four strings, in sound somewhat resembling the mandolin, but larger, and therefore often, though inaccurately, given the conventional English translation 'lute'.

portieres See door-curtains.

predestined affinity (yuanfen) This means the supposed occult and inscrutable chain of causes or attractions that operate to bring together those who have an affinity for each other or who are predestined to be joined together. Marriages are predestined. Thus fate reaches down to the home, as into other fields of life. One's family connections are 'recorded and settled by Heaven', in previous existences. They were 'fixed in a former life', on account of the actions and feelings of the couple there. (Based on Calvin Wilson Mateer, Mandarin Lessons (Shanghai, 1903), p. 548.) The following related proverbs are based on Clifford Plopper, Chinese Religion Seen through the Proverb (Shanghai, 1926), pp. 2957.

Children, husbands and wives are a retribution for enmities in a former life. (This thread of affinity, running from one incarnation into another, is of course unconscious, as both parties have drunk of the Cup of Oblivion. Where there is this pre-existing relationship, marriages are consummated even though the parties are widely separated, and without it even playmates are nothing to each other.) When there is a predestined affinity, friends will come a thousand li to meet; and when there is none, they will not become acquainted though face to face. (Those who have deeply loved in former lives are often permitted to return together and enter again into the same relationship. On the other hand, it is likely to be the doom of enemies to work out the repayment of their former enmities in a marital connection in a succeeding existence.) Husband and wife were enemies and did evil to each other in a previous life; sons and daughters all come to collect debts. (Thus is destiny bringing about the just government of the universe, in the marriage union.) Qing dynasty The Manchu conquerors called their dynasty Qing, or Clear (as their Chinese predecessors had called theirs Ming, or Bright). Thus the two words Qing and Manchu when used for the dynasty refer to the same period, Manchu being the ethnic designation, Qing the dynastic.

Qing Ming Festival This annual festival usually falls during the first half of the month of April. It is the occasion for sweeping the graves and honouring the dead. Because whole families often went out to the family tombs (including the womenfolk), the festival (like the Lantern Festival) is often the setting in Chinese fiction for 'chance' or 'romantic' encounters, with interesting consequences.

raksha (luosha) From the Sanskrit. A type of malignant spirit or demon, devourer of men, similar to a yaksha. Described as terrifying, with black bodies, red hair and green eyes.

reincarnation This originally Hindu and Buddhist concept, sometimes expressed in other terms transmigration, rebirth plays a very important part in many of Pu Songling's Tales. It must not be forgotten that by Pu Songling's time, Buddhism had already been absorbed into Chinese culture for many centuries and had come to exercise a deep influence on the two indigenous creeds of Taoism and Confucianism (and neo-Confucianism). Thus basic Buddhist ideas such as reincarnation had become an integral part of Chinese culture. Multi-incarnational plots (as in many of the Tales) are often hard to follow for the Western reader, not accustomed to the Buddhist idea of the never-ceasing Wheel or Cycle or Round of Life and Death, samsra (what the Chinese call lunhui, literally the Turning of the Wheel'). Suffering (and most of the detail of plot that stems from it) is the consequence of a human's being bound to this wheel by the continuing action of karma. As Derk Bodde, translator of the modern philosopher Fung Yulan (Feng Youlan), points out, while true Buddhist thought 'denies the existence of an enduring entity (soul, ego or tman), which is carried along with karma into [another] existence... most Chinese interpreted the cycle of transmigration to mean that there is an enduring soul which does not perish' (A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2 vols. (Princeton, 19523), II, p. 286, note 1).

This rebirth of a soul can happen on or between a variety of levels (deity, man, animal, hungry ghost and denizen of Hell) and in a variety of ways. 'A departed human soul may pass into the body of another deceased person, and thus resuscitate it [usually, but not always, causing no physical change]. [Or alternatively] an excarnated soul may obtain a new body by being reborn through a mother' (de Groot, IV, p. 143).

One of the most common terms for being reborn, toutai, is defined as 'making one's way into a womb, passing into the womb, as the spirit of a dead person does when sent back to earth for rebirth' in Herbert Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (London, 1898); and 'quicken, to be reborn into another state of existence' in R. H. Mathews, ChineseEnglish Dictionary (Shanghai, 1931), p. 943. De Groot comments: 'Rebirth may be connected with change of sex' (The Religious System of China, IV, p. 147).

In the light of the widespread acceptance of this doctrine among the Chinese, De Groot remarks memorably: 'Evangelists in China must hardly feel astonished at finding that the Lord's resurrection, which they preach, makes little impression on the reading class, in the eyes of whom that miracle must appear a very commonplace event' (IV, p. 124). Of course, the idea of reincarnation has a long history in the West, from the ancient Greeks (Orphism, Pythagoras) to the present day. Tolstoy, himself greatly influenced by Eastern thought, wrote this in 1908: Our whole life is a dream. The dreams of our present life are the environment in which we work out the impressions, thoughts, feelings of a former life. As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of thousands of such lives which we enter from the other, more real life and then return to after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life. I believe in it. I know it. I see it without a doubt.

(Voice of Universal Love 40 (Moscow, 1908), quoted in Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, PSI: Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain (London, 1977), pp. 1689) scholars and students In an important sense, the entire mandarin elite in traditional China consisted of 'scholars' and 'students'. But neither word carries with it much of its normal English baggage. The 'scholars' were not necessarily at all scholarly, and the 'students' were usually neither young nor bohemian. But they were all, by virtue of their training, literati, scholar-gentlemen. In that sense, the early Jesuits were right to say that China was Plato's dream come true, a land ruled by philosophers and men of letters.

Passing the various degrees and examinations could be a lifelong and frustrating occupation (as Pu Songling knew from bitter experience). Wu Jingzi's brilliant eighteenth-century satirical novel The Scholars provides a wonderful gallery of these lifelong 'mature students'. When a character is introduced in Strange Tales as a 'scholar' or a 'student' there is no way of telling at first what age he may be. All one knows for sure is that he is part of the mandarin elite. Therefore I have often translated these words as 'gentleman'.

sedan-chairs See palanquins.

shadows It is a matter of public opinion in China that ghosts, when showing themselves in a human shape, have no shadows. In truth, they are bodiless and mere shadows or souls themselves, and a shadow of a shadow is something hardly imaginable. (See de Groot, The Religious System of China, IV, p. 88.) sing-song girls This all-purpose term, frequently encountered in Strange Tales, covers a variety of different types of women who offered their services for hire in traditional Chinese cities. At the top level, they were skilful musicians (their preferred instrument being the four-stringed piba), writers and performers of lyrics, trained dancers and geisha-like courtesans, rather than simple prostitutes. Such high-level sing-song girls would be regularly invited to entertain at official banquets. They often had long-standing relations with prominent members of society, and as Robert van Gulik points out in Sexual Life in Ancient China (p. 181), they offered their clients not just carnal pleasure but 'a welcome relief from the often oppressive atmosphere of the women's quarters and the compulsory sexual relations' that characterized the typical Chinese upper-class household. (An excellent depiction of this demi-monde in nineteenth-century Shanghai can be found in the 1998 film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Flowers of Shanghai, itself based on a well-written novel from the last years of the Manchu dynasty.) soul (shen, gui, hun, po) Of the two souls attributed to man by ancient Chinese philosophy, the shen or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal part of the Cosmos, and consists of Yang substance. When operating actively in the living human body, it is called qi or 'breath' (energy) and hun; when separated from it after death, it exists as a refulgent spirit, styled ming (bright). The gui, the material, substantial soul, emanates from the terrestrial part of the Universe, and is formed of Yin substance. In living man it operates under the name of po, and on his death it returns to the Earth. The jing, sometimes translated as 'seminal essence', signifies a certain force or fluid that dwells in man, constituting the working energy of his soul, its effective power. (Based on de Groot, The Religious System of China, IV, pp. 5 and 10.) strange (qi) Sometimes translated 'rare', qi (written with a quite different character from the qi meaning 'energy') is really an untranslatable word. Literally it means 'remarkable', 'strange', 'extraordinary', but it has definite associations not fully expressed by the word 'remarkable'. 'There must go with it a subjective love of the unusual, the unconventional and the unattainable by common men. Tired of the humdrum world and the common run of men and things, one is on the lookout for qi or rare books, rocks, peaks, flowers, perfumes, delicacies, jewels, curios, etc.' (Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 455).

studio (zhai) The Chinese scholar-gentleman's studio is the backdrop to this whole collection, the arena in which these Tales take place. Pu Songling has peopled the universe of the studio with the creatures of the scholar-gentleman's mind. It is both highly refined, the home environment of a class where letters and ritual were greatly prized, and also animated by a rich and sometimes violent energy. It is a microcosm of traditional male-dominated Chinese society.