drinking game: For examples of more mundane drinking games, see the (eighteenth-century) novel The Story of the Stone, especially Chapter 28.

the festival of the winter solstice: This festival, known in Chinese as la, goes back into very early Chinese history. See Tun Li-ch'en, Annual Customs and Festivals (Peiping, 1936), p. 93.

72.

A FATAL JOKE.

Sun Jingxia: A holder of the juren second degree, who in the fourth year of the Emperor Kangxi's reign (1665) held the teaching post of Instructor in Zichuan, Pu Songling's home town. He went on to become a county magistrate.

75.

GHOST FOILED, FOX PUT TO ROUT.

The Chronicler of the Strange writes: I was born too late, alas, to have been able to offer Li the use of my own stick or slippers. But I heard this tale from my elders and am convinced of the great spirit and fearlessness of the man, of which these two incidents provide ample evidence. When a man has such largeness of spirit, he has nothing to fear from spirits and foxes!

Wang Jiliang of Xincheng: Feng Zhenluan (1818) states that this Wang was a relation of the celebrated poet Wang Shizhen (who himself added certain comments to Strange Tales).

76.

FROG CHORUS.

Wang Zisun: A historical person, the educated son of a poor Zichuan family, whose life is recorded in the Zichuan Gazetteer.

79.

FLOWERS OF ILLUSION.

He Shouqi (1823) remarks: 'The Taoist was a crafty fellow!' Dan Minglun (1842) comments, when the man returns empty-handed from the lake: 'Form is Void, and Void is Form. If we go searching through Form [the word also carries the meaning of Beauty or Desire] then it [the object of our search] will be ever harder to find, ever more distant.' On the blood staining the Intendant's chair: 'If only this punishment could be meted out for every miscarriage of justice.'

Darning Lake: 'Great Clear Lake', fed by the numerous springs of Ji'nan, occupies the whole of the northern part of the old inner city, covering a quarter of the total area within the city walls. There is a very fine description of it in the second chapter of the late-nineteenth-century novel The Travels of Lao Ts'an, by Liu Tieyun (translated in 1952 by Harold Shadick). The couplet on the great gate bore the following inscription: 'Four sides lotuses, three sides willows. A whole city of mountains, half a city of lake.'

What a pity there are no lotuses... gathering: In addition to being one of the principal symbols of Buddhism, the lotus was greatly appreciated by the traditional Chinese scholar-gentleman. The love of the lotus was memorably expressed by the Song-dynasty philosopher Zhou Dunyi (101773): I myself especially love the lotus. It emerges from the mud and remains untainted. It cleanses itself in the purest water and yet never flaunts its beauty. It is hollow within and upright without. It has no tendrils or branches. Its scent is the finer for distance. It stands pure and upright. It can be viewed from afar, but not fondled closely. I consider the lotus the true gentleman among flowers.

80.

DWARF.

He Shouqi (1823) comments: 'In recent years, a similar case to this occurred in Guangdong Province. The Magistrate investigated it, but it is not known if the magician concerned was put to death. The Magistrate of Ye was an admirable fellow.' (He Shouqi was himself of Cantonese origin.) In his Strange Stories (p. 139, note 1), Herbert Giles quotes from the Hong Kong China Mail, 15 May 1878: Young children are bought or stolen at a tender age and placed in a qing, or vase with a narrow neck, and having in this case a movable bottom. In this receptacle the unfortunate little wretches are kept for years in a sitting posture, their heads outside, being all the while carefully tended and fed... When the child has reached the age of twenty or over, he or she is taken away to some distant place and 'discovered' in the woods as a wild man or woman.

82.

PRINCESS LOTUS.

Cassia Palace: A double allusion, to the fairy precincts of the Moon Goddess, in which legend has it there grew a cassia tree; and to the 'plucking of the cassia branch', a figure for the achievement of success in the civil service examinations.

A gentleman cherishes the lotus flower: An allusion to the famous eulogy of the lotus by the Song-dynasty philosopher Zhou Dunyi. See the note to Tale 79, 'Flowers of Illusion'.

And then suddenly he awoke... sun had almost set: As the commentators Feng Zhenluan (1818) and Dan Minglun (1842) point out, 'Princess Lotus' harks back to two classic dream-tales of the Tang dynasty, 'The World in a Pillow', by Shen Jiji (c. 740c. 800; see Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, 1, pp. 10214), and 'A Lifetime in a Dream', by Li Gongzuo (c. 770c. 848; see Wolfgang Bauer and Herbert Franke, The Golden Casket (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 10217). In the former tale, a man dreams of the passage of an entire lifetime while he dozes with his head on a hollow pillow made of green porcelain. He wakes to find that this 'lifetime' of his has 'lasted' less than the time needed to cook a bowl of millet gruel. The latter expresses the same basic idea, but this time the dream world is identified with an ant colony located beneath the 'southern branch' of a nearby tree. Both were turned into lyric dramas by the great Ming playwright Tang Xianzu (15501617).

83.

THE GIRL IN GREEN.

light as silk: Some texts have 'light as a fly'.

84.

DUCK JUSTICE.

our county town: Zichuan, fifty miles east of Ji'nan.

86.

STEEL SHIRT.

Steel Shirt: He Shouqi (1823) comments that this style of kungfu was still in existence in his day. And it is still practised today. Wong Kiew Kit writes: 'An established method like Steel Shirt prescribes that you can withstand a weapon attack on your body without sustaining injury if you practise the training procedure for three years' (The Art of Shaolin Kung Fu (Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1996), p. 46).