Authors: Pu Songling

Pu was the third of four sons. He passed his xiucai examinations with highest honors in 1658, but the gongshi degree, the next in order, eluded him, though he attended the examinations regularly until he was seventy-one. As a result he was thwarted in his ambition, shared by all literocrats of traditional China, of entering government service, and he was forced to content himself with serving as secretary to more fortunate friends (from 1670 to around 1692) and in teaching in the family schools of the local gentry (until 1710).

Pu spent a considerable amount of time collecting and embellishing stories of strange events. These stories usually depict men’s or women’s romantic encounters with ghosts, fox fairies, or other spirits in mortal disguise. With few exceptions, these spirits exemplify ideal human qualities with regard to love, honor, loyalty, and wisdom; thus, they serve to form a striking contrast with the evils that existed in the world of actuality.

The major portion of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio must have been completed by 1679, the date of the preface, but internal evidence suggests many subsequent additions, one as late as 1707. The book was circulated in manuscript during the author’s lifetime and was much esteemed by some of his more prominent contemporaries. Upon its publication in 1766, it was an immediate success. For the traditional literocrat, Pu’s stories are masterpieces of the polished, allusive, classical style. For the modern reader, they represent a radical advance over all previous examples of the same genre because of the richness of invention displayed by the author and the touch of humanity that he gives to all his ghosts, fox fairies, and flower spirits, which makes them seem real, if not probable.

Until 1932, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio was virtually the only work by which Pu was known. In that year, however, Hu Shih published his study of Pu’s Xingshi yinyuan zhuan (marriage as retribution) and proved conclusively that this epic novel of a henpecked husband, which had appeared anonymously in 1870, was also written by Pu. Because of the interest aroused by this discovery and the recognition of this hitherto neglected novel as one of the two or three greatest works of Chinese fiction (the other two being Jin ping mei and Hong lou meng), the unpublished works of the author were sought out and published in 1936 under the title Liaozhai quanzhi (collected works). The two books of prose and three of verse in the literocratic tradition included in the collection occasioned no surprise, but the rest of the material would have seemed incredible if Hu Shih’s study had not prepared the reader for it, for this body of work comprises seven short satires and eleven longish romances in the guzici or tanci form (singing accompanied by a drum or by a stringed instrument) of the popular tradition. Some of these last, elaborations of stories of wicked mothers-in-law, jealous wives, and henpecked husbands, had appeared in briefer forms in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. In thus dealing with the same set of themes in three different media—first in the short tale form, then as romances in prose and verse, and finally in a long epic novel—Pu Songling is unique in the history of Chinese literature.