Pu Songling

Pu Songling (1640-1715), was a native of Zichuan, Shandong in Qing Dynasty. He became a famous literary figure in his youth, but he never passed the imperial exams to be an official scholar. He never became wealthy in his life and he made a living as a private tutor. His fantastic fiction, “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”, ranks among the most important works in China.

Though well-trained by his father in the classics, he never qualified for public office except for a brief appointment as an aide to a county magistrate in Jiangsu. When he returned to his home town he worked as a private tutor. His most famous work is Liaozhai zhiyi “Strange stories from a Chinese studio”, a collection of stories about ghosts and spirits which he began work on at the age of twenty and only completed late in his life.

The Strange Tales of Pu Songling are exquisite and amusing miniatures that are regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction. With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems.  Here a Taoist monk conjures up a magical pear tree, a scholar recounts his previous incarnations, a woman out-foxes the fox-spirit that possesses her, a child bride gives birth to a thimble-sized baby, a ghostly city appears out of nowhere and a heartless daughter-in-law is turned into a pig.  In his tales of humans coupling with shape-shifting spirits, bizarre phenomena, haunted buildings and enchanted objects, Pu Songling pushes back the boundaries of human experience and enlightens as he entertains