Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Volume One

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Volume One

Pu Songling

The mountain spirit draped in fragrant herbs stirred Qu Yuan’s poetic feeling; grotesque affairs of ox-demons and snake-spirits became something Li He chanted with addiction. To speak straight from the heart, to be out of step with common custom—there is a tradition and a reason for it. I am lonely, lowly, and insignificant, like an autumn firefly; yet the faint light I give off provokes goblins and monsters to fight over it. Those who chase fame and profit and drift with the world provoke the sneers of ghosts and sprites. Though my talent cannot compare with Gan Bao’s, I am obsessed with gathering strange matters; my temperament is close to Su Shi’s, for I delight in hearing people tell stories of ghosts. Whatever I heard, I wrote down, and thus compiled it into a book. As time went on, like-minded people around me sent stories of shared interest. Because of this love and inclination, the number of tales not only gathered and accumulated more and more, but their contents also surpassed imagination: though they concerned people nearby, the things that happened were stranger than those in barbarous lands; though the events took place right before one’s eyes, their marvels were even more bizarre than those of a country where human heads could fly. The flight of unrestrained fancy and wild abandon was indeed hard to resist; to entrust forever a free and expansive heart to these things, in a state of intoxicated obsession, need not be concealed. Honest people may laugh at me for this. Yet hearsay may perhaps contain untrue words, while stories on the Stone of Three Lives may make people understand the causes and consequences of former and present lives. Therefore, words that are reckless and unbridled may contain some truth, and one should not dismiss the statement merely because of the speaker.

When I was born, my father dreamed of a sickly monk, wearing a kasaya robe, with his right shoulder bared, walking into the bedroom. On his chest was stuck a round plaster, the size of a copper coin. My father woke in alarm, and just then I was born, truly resembling what he had dreamed. Moreover, from childhood I was weak and often ill, and when I grew up my fate was inferior to others’. My gate was cold and deserted, with few carriages and horses, and my home resembled a monk’s cell far removed from the dusty world; I made my living by brush and ink, and my poor, desolate life was like a monk’s alms bowl. I often scratched my head and wondered: could that monk really have been my former self? Perhaps because I had deficiencies in a previous life and could not achieve the true fruition, in this present life I have been unfortunate like a fallen flower drifting among fences and cesspits. Alas, in the vastness of the six realms of reincarnation, how can one say there is no principle of cause and effect? It is only pitiful that, in the middle of the night, accompanied by a dim, half-bright candle, alone in a desolate study before a cold writing desk, I intended to gather little things into a great quantity, to collect tales of foxes and ghosts, and presumptuously hoped to make them a sequel to the Records of the Netherworld; drinking wine as I wrote, I used them only to vent the indignation in my breast. Such a form of entrustment is truly sad and lamentable. Alas! I am like a cold bird after frost, pressing close to a branch yet feeling no warmth; or like an autumn insect grieving beneath the moon, huddling against the railing to warm itself. The understanding kindred spirit can only be sought in the dimness of dream and soul.

Spring of the eighteenth year of Kangxi

Volume One