Introducing ‘The Chattering Salon: Strange happenings from the world of contemporary Chinese fiction’

What connects a dauntless warrior afraid of knives; a corrupt official reincarnated first as a horse, then a dog, then a snake; a mystic mountaintop town that shrivels to the size of a bean; and a young scholar’s drunken humiliation at the hands of a malevolent vulpine demon?

In truth, not much.

In Strange Tales from the Studio of Leisure 聊齋誌異 (first published in 1766), 491 absurd stories with a colourful cast of demons, eclectic narrative structures and disparate thematic content are loosely strung together by Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 wry wit and vivid, playful prose.

Pu’s anthology of pithy, fantastical and sometimes frustratingly unfollowable anecdotes serves as inspiration for this blog. Each fortnight, I aim to publish my own translations of hitherto untranslated tales of the bizarre from the contemporary Chinese-speaking world that belie – and often subvert – straightforward allegorical readings. In a world where English-language criticism of Chinese fiction so often attempts to subjugate works of creative brilliance to tired political narratives, ‘The Chattering Salon’ aims to showcase contemporary Chinese-language fantasy writing that displays no immediately apparent moral teachings. In doing so, I hope to draw upon stories from titans of twentieth-century literature, to emerging Taiwanese writers, to serials from China’s burgeoning television industry. These translations seek to celebrate writing for its creative verve rather than the dry political analysis of much Western commentary.

Pu’s writings draw upon the Chinese literary tradition of Zhiguai 志怪 – ‘weird accounts’ of monsters, apparitions and hallucinatory episodes from the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 AD) – interspersing biographies of lowly bandits and renowned scholars alike with luminous depictions of their encounters with the mystical realm. Pu’s ‘studio of leisure’ – alternatively translated as ‘make-do studio’ or ‘Chinese studio’; here translated as ‘chattering salon’ – is imagined by 2012 Nobel Laureate Mo Yan 莫言, the subject of a forthcoming blog post, as an open-air, makeshift bureau consisting of a square table beneath a willow tree in the author’s hometown, Zichuan. Under the shade of the drooping willow branches, Pu solicits mystical stories from fatigued passers-by in exchange for a cup of tea, a pouch of tobacco and a moment of their company.

Mo Yan’s unassuming depiction of the raconteur’s chattering salon mirrors the rambling structures of Pu’s stories. Strange Tales follow sprawling, unpredictable narrative arcs, as if recounted in haste by a parched traveller seeking respite under Pu’s willow tree. In some tales, Pu spills copious ink on lyrical depictions of trivial details of no apparent relevance to the thrust of his narratives. In “A Town on the Mountain” 山村, for example, we witness a regal town with jade palaces and billions of towering buildings suddenly rise from the misty haze surrounding the summit of Mount Huan, before the mirage fades into obscurity, shrinking to the size of a bean before the disbelieving eyes of a traveling scholar.

In some stories, the narrative voice reveals itself in a post-scriptum, masquerading as a learned ‘historian of the strange’ who explains the moral implications of the characters’ supernatural encounters. Yet in most, any moral teaching is illusory. Instead, the narrative flow is interrupted by sharp humorous interjections. In “Sha Huizi” 紗繪子 and “A Sharp Knife” 快刀, Pu concludes his writing with absurd images that undercut the stories’ otherwise matter-of-fact tone: of a dauntless warrior of supernatural strength who is revealed to be afraid of knives, and of a slain bandit’s animate head rolling on the ground, marvelling at the sharpness of his executor’s blade. Other stories are brought to an abrupt end after a few sentences, their characters frustratingly terminated in their ideational infancy, leaving their development to the reader’s imagination.

Pu’s profane recounting of illicit encounters challenge Western perceptions of Chinese literature – and Chinese society more broadly – as deeply conservative. In “Subduing Fox Spirits” 付狐, for example, Pu recounts two colourful sexual interactions with two vulpine demons in gory depth. Here, it is implied that fox spirits are domitable only through sexual subjugation. And while Pu’s bent towards profanity in Strange Tales certainly alienated his more highbrow literary contemporaries, its status as a classic of Qing-dynasty literature attests to the enduring appeal of absurdity and the profane in Chinese fiction.

Such was the perceived vulgarity of Pu’s stories that Western sinologists struggled to reconcile their literary merit with the Edwardian moral standards. Herbert Giles’ 1916 translation of Strange Tales is often criticised for his attempts censor Pu’s racier narratives to suit the pearl-clutching sensibilities of his puritanical readership. In Giles’ telling of “The Painted Wall” 畫壁, Pu’s gory depiction of a young man’s sexual encounter with a ghost in a temple mural is omitted in favour of an banal wedding scene, in which bride and groom fall to their knees to worship heaven and earth. Pu’s graphic depictions of illicit, often bestial romantic encounters compel us to re-assess Western commentators’ tendency to overstate the prudishness of Chinese readers’ tastes. According to a recent obit of twentieth-century novelist Taiwanese Chiung Yao 瓊瑤, it took the author’s steamy tales of scandalous extra-marital affairs to ‘teach’ Chinese readership about romantic love.

Some of Pu’s Strange Tales flirt with allegory, too. In the stories in which his social critiques were somewhat more overt, Pu’s scathing assessment of the depraved, venal upper classes reflect his coming-of-age in a time of tremendous political tumult. Born in 1640 into a moderately prosperous mercantile family amidst China’s turbulent transition from the Ming (1368-1644) to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Pu witnessed Zichuan ravaged by the imperial forces of the ascendant Manchu conquest elite. He excelled academically, placing first in the first three provincial rounds of the competitive imperial examination process. Pu nonetheless proved unable to obtain second degree, thus disqualifying him from a coveted position as a civil servant. This story of personal disappointment and unrealised potential permanently embittered the author’s outlook on the bureaucratic class.

Pu’s candid presentation of the corruption of the powerful mirrors this jaundiced view of officialdom. In “Three Lives” 三生, the King of the Underworld reincarnates an old man as a horse, a dog and a snake as punishment for his malfeasance as an official in a prior life. ‘Among monsters’, the narrator concludes, ‘there are some who were once nobility; by this logic, among the nobility, there are some who were once monsters’.

Equally, “Prince An” 安公子 chronicles the folly of a ‘renowned scholar’ who succumbs to the bewitchment of a fox spirit while awaiting the results of his imperial examination, and debases himself in drunken delirium in front of his long-suffering wife. However, Pu then subverts the otherwise disparaging tone of this story in an epilogue – a rather more sympathetic commentary supposedly written by a sagacious ‘historian of the strange’. Here, we are told that aspiring civil servants invariably undergo seven figurative emotional incarnations (including an ailing bird, a poisoned housefly and a tied-up monkey) throughout the examination process, before emerging with renewed hope and commitment to scholarly pursuits, like a mother turtledove reconstructing her ravaged nest. Pu, no doubt drawing upon his own tribulations in the unforgiving, mechanical imperial examination system, casts our hapless scholar in a far more compassionate light here: blame for his erratic behaviour is shifted from the scholar himself to a malevolent fox spirit, who seeks to exploit him deep in the throes of emotional frailty.

Such a sympathetic presentation of a character of such ostensibly weak moral fibre demonstrates the limitations of allegorical readings of Strange Tales. While Pu’s rather dim view of the bureaucratic elite certainly shines through in much of his writing, characters of every moral hue fall victim to the bedevilment of the supernatural realm. Indeed, it is difficult to impose a consistent didactic message onto Strange Tales, wherein morality is as ambiguous as the distinction between the mystic and the mundane.

So read the stories translated below – and all the translated works that will follow on this blog – with an open mind, unburdened by the need for tidy moral resolutions. Allow the allure of the mystic realm to transcend the rigidity of life on the earthly plane, and draw you into a world where both domains bleed into one and other.

Translated works: “Sha Huizi” 紗繪子, “A Sharp Knife” 快刀, “Mountain Town” 山村, “Subduing Fox Spirits” 付狐, “Prince An” 王子安 and “Three Lives” 三生, all from Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 Strange Tales from the Studio of Leisure 聊齋誌異 (1766)

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“Sha Huizi” 紗繪子

Sha Huizi studied the great strength technique of the iron shirt. With just a firm pinch of his fingers, he could cut through an ox’s neck. By thrusting his body mass to one side, he could leave a hole in an ox’s belly. Once, at the home of Prince Peng San of the Chou Family, a wooden beam was suspended in the air. Two sturdy manservants exhausted all their might to push it away, but it swung back ferociously. Sha absorbed the impact on his stomach and, with a loud banging sound, flung the beams away into the distance. On another occasion, he placed his manhood on a stone and struck it with a wooden mallet. He left entirely unscathed. He was, however, afraid of knives.

“A Sharp Knife” 快刀

Around the time of the demise of the Ming dynasty, banditry plagued the Ji region. Soldiers were stationed in each town, and executed bandits upon their capture. Zhangqiu was a town particularly overrun by banditry. There, one soldier brandished a knife so sharp that it could penetrate the space between bandits’ joints as it killed them. One day, more than ten bandits were captured and paraded to the public execution grounds. There, one bandit recognised this solder and hesitantly pleaded to him, ‘Sir, I have heard that your blade is the sharpest around. It is said that you execute people with your first stroke with no need for a second. I beg you, kill me!’ ‘Very well’, the soldier responded, ‘be certain to stay close to me and don’t move away, then.’ The bandit followed him to the place of execution, whereupon the soldier produced his blade and swung it forth. In an instant, the bandit’s head fell to the ground. The bandit’s head, still rolling in circles several paces away, let out a cry of approval, ‘Caw, what a sharp knife!’

“Mountain Town” 山村

The mountain town atop Mount Huan is one of the most scenic villages around, yet it is only ever seen once every few years. Once, Master Sun Yunian was out drinking with his associates on the top floor of a hostel when he suddenly witnessed a fox temple rise from the summit, standing tall against the azure sky. Startled, Sun and his associates looked at each other with suspicion, knowing full well that until now, no such house of meditation existed in their vicinity. Before long, ten or so palaces emerged with jade roofs and soaring eaves. Slowly, they began to realise that this was indeed the fabled mountain town. Shortly after, towering walls and fortresses spilled out for six or seven miles, forming a city housing billions of buildings, halls and archways before their eyes. A sudden bout of wind threw a haze of dust upon the city, obscuring it to just a faint outline. Even after the wind settled and the sky cleared, all had vanished. Only one building – one which reached straight up to the high heavens – remained standing. The building housed four storeys, and all the windows and doors were flung wide open. Five bright lights stood in a row on the building and outside it was just the sky. As he took the measure of the buildings, he noticed that the lights became dimmer the higher up they were positioned. Setting his sights on the eighth storey, he noticed that the lights were as faint as stars. Above, the lights faded into an indiscernible blur such that it was impossible to count any further. People walking to and fro were dotted throughout the building, some leaning, some standing, all in different positions. As time passed, the building gradually lowered in stature to the point that its roof became visible. It then shrank to the size of an ordinary building, before shrinking to the size of a tall house. It then suddenly shrunk to the size of a bean and before long, it became invisible. Those who travel in the early morning are also reported to have seen bustling markets and the haze of human life on top of the mountain. This town appears no different to the earthly realm, which has earned it the moniker of ‘Ghost Market’.

“Subduing Fox Spirits” 付狐

A certain scholar was bedevilled by a fox spirit, and as a consequence was beset by an emaciating illness. Having exhausted all remedies of exorcism and prayer, he requested a leave of absence and returned home with the hope of escaping the fox’s malign orbit. Yet wherever the scholar walked, the fox spirit would follow closely in his footsteps, filling the man with distress and leaving him at a loss for what to do. One day, the scholar stayed the night in Zhou. Outside his door appeared a travelling doctor, who professed to be able to subdue fox spirits. The historian invited the doctor into his lodging. There, he administered some medicine, which was in fact designed to aid bedroom activities. The doctor implored the scholar to take it. The scholar proceeded to engage in vigorous relations with the fox – he simply could not be stopped. The fox, utterly disarmed, let out distressed pleas for him to stop. The scholar paid no heed, though, and continued with renewed boldness. The fox stretched and squirmed hoping to break free, but despite his bitter pleas could not escape. After some time, the fox turned silent. The scholar looked over to the fox, who appeared to have reverted to his original form as a cadaver.

A mortal from my own hometown, famed for his virility, had garnered a reputation for being something of a Lao Ai figure. Yet by his own admission, he had never in his life experienced a moment of true satisfaction himself. One night as he lodged at a remote countryside lair, a woman burst into his room before he could even open the door. He acknowledged deep down that this woman was a fox spirit, but nonetheless eagerly engaged in intimacy with her. Their garments barely untied, he penetrated her with such force that the fox spirit cried out in shock and displeasure like an eagle escaping its hood, before escaping through the window. The man, eyes fixated on the window, let out flirtatious calls to allure the fox spirit back, but was met with silence. Now this man was a truly fierce warrior in the battle against fox spirits! Indeed, he ought to have hung a sign saying ‘fox exiling services’ upon his door; he could have made a decent living that way.

“Prince An” 王子安

Prince An, a renowned scholar from Dongchang, suffered great hardship when undergoing imperial examinations. After entering the exam hall, he grew extremely nervous with anticipation. As the publication of the ranking of candidates drew nearer, he drank himself delirious and returned to his chambers. Suddenly, a person appeared and announced that a messenger horse had arrived. The Prince leapt to his feet and responded, ‘I shall reward you ten thousand coins!’ Recognising his inebriated state, his family members told him the following lie so as to pacify him, ‘I beg you, just go back to sleep; the reward has already been paid’. The prince thereupon fell asleep once more. But shortly thereafter another person entered and said, ‘You have passed the examination and are now an imperial scholar!’ ‘But I haven’t gone to the city yet to attain my results’, the Prince thought to himself, ‘how could I have earned a degree?’ ‘Don’t you remember?’, the man said in response, ‘you have completed all three rounds of examination’. Th Prince, overcome with delight, leapt up and exclaimed, ‘I award you ten thousand coins!’ His family pacified his demand with the same lie as before. Some time later, another person entered the Prince’s chambers with great urgency and said, ‘You have been selected to study in Hanlin; your servants have already arrived’. Two men bowed at the foot of the Prince’s bed, their garments prim and proper. The Prince called for gifts of food and drink for his guests, but his family once again paid no heed, quietly chuckling at his intoxicated state. A while later, the Prince thought to himself that he simply had to go down to the village to boast of his accomplishment, so he called out for his servants. But after calling out dozens of times, he heard no response. Laughing, his family members instructed him to wait, telling him that they would go and find his servants. Another while later, the servants returned. The Prince struck his bed and stamped his feet in anger, scolding his servants, ‘Hopeless slaves, you! Why have you left me?’ Incensed, the servants replied, ‘You miserable scoundrel of a scholar. We were merely playing along with your game, what business do you have cursing us so candidly?!’ The Prince jumped forth and in a sudden bout of anger launched himself on his servants, knocking their caps clean of their heads. In doing so, the Prince collapsed to the floor too.

His wife entered and lifted the Prince up. ‘How on earth have you got yourself this drunk?!’ she said. ‘My servants are utterly lamentable’, the Prince replied, ‘so I had to reprimand them. What’s that got to do with my drunkenness?’ ‘There is but one maidservant in this house’, his wife laughed in response, ‘she cooks for you in the daytime and keeps your feet warm at night. Where business would anyone have serving a hopeless pauper like you?’ Their children burst into laugher. The Prince then sobered up and, as if he had suddenly awoken from a dream, began to acknowledge that the events earlier that evening were mere hallucinations. Yet he still remembered his servants’ caps falling to the floor. As he searched for them behind the door, he found a string hat the size of a cup, leading everyone to doubt their assumption that that evening’s events had been delusions. The prince, chuckling to himself, said, ‘People of days gone by were bewitched by demons; but today, I have been fooled by a fox’.

The historian of the strange remarked: ‘when an impeccable scholar enters imperial examination his exhibits seven different forms:

1. ‘Upon his first entry, he resembles a barefooted tramp carrying a basket. When his name is read out, the officials taunt him and scold him as though he is a prisoner.
2. Upon his return to his place of examination, he stretches his head and feet through a hold and resembles a cold bee at the end of Autumn.
3. After leaving the examination hall, his spirit deflated and the whole world discoloured, he resembles an ailing bird escaped from a cage. As he awaits the publication of his results, he is startled even by grass and woods and his dreams grow fantastical.
4. As time passes, he envisages his success. In an instant, buildings rise before his eyes; the next moment, his bones rot await. Amidst these ebbs and flows, he can neither sit nor stand still, and he resembles a tied-up monkey.
5. Suddenly, a messenger on horseback bursts forth, but his name is nowhere to be found on the publication of results. His spirit changes in an instant and he collapses like a ghost. Under such circumstances, he resembles a poisoned fly, and does not awaken even if perturbed.
6. At first, the scholar carries an ashen hard and a loses all will. Dejected, he loudly derides the officials for their lack of balance and blindness, lambasts his brush for its lack of wisdom and resolves to burn all the books in his study. When burning alone no longer satiates him, he stomps on their ashes; when stomping alone no longer satiates him, he hurls them into a filthy water. At this point, he lets his hair grow wild and sets off to the mountains and squares up to a stone wall, where he vows that if anyone presents him with texts containing the words ‘furthermore’ or ‘it is often said’, he will with out doubt take up arms and scare them away.
7. But as this period fades into the distance, his temper will level off and his instinct for learning will gradually itch anew. Following this, the scholar resembles a turtledove left with no choice but to rebuild her nest after her eggs are shattered. Those going through such experiences will feel such excruciating torment that they wish to die, while those witnessing it from the side-lines only see the humour.

‘Ten thousand emotions soared through Prince An’s mind in an instant. The fox spirits, having taken great pleasure at An’s misfortune for a while at this stage, sought to use his drunkenness to play tricks on him. When he finally awoke from his bed, even his wife could not help but laugh. The taste of success, however, is merely momentary. Scholars of Hanlin Academy enjoy no more than two or three such moments. Prince An, meanwhile, exhausted all of his moments of success in one short day. In that sense, I suppose, the foxes’ kindness was similar to that of an examiner.’

“Three Lives” 三生

Liu Xiaolian could remember things from his past life. Privately, he convinced himself that in one of his prior incarnations, he had been a public official who had committed several transgressions. Upon his death at the age of 62, he was brought before the King of the Underworld, who treated him with respect due to his status as an elder of his village. The King invited Liu to sit down and drink tea. Liu squinted at the King’s tea and noticed that the liquid was clear in colour, while his was as muddy as glue. He quietly pondered whether he was drinking the soul-muddling soup, and while the King was tending to other matters, poured his tea to the floor in the corner, pretending that he had drunk it all.

Shortly thereafter, the King looked over the records of Liu’s past transgressions, and angrily ordered a group of ghosts to detain and punish him by reincarnating him as a horse. Immediately, a ferocious ghost tied him up and took him away. They walked to a house with a high threshold that Liu was unable to pass through. He hesitated, and the ghost struck him, causing such pain that he collapsed. He looked at himself, and realised found he had been reborn as a colt in a stable. ‘The black horse has given birth to a male colt’, he heard someone say. Liu’s mind was lucid, but he could not speak. Feeling extremely hungry, he had no choice but to suckle his mother. Four or five years passed, and Liu grew to become a sturdy horse who feared beatings and would panic upon seeing a whip. When his master mounted him, he was fitted with a saddle and ridden gently, an ordeal which he could. However, the stable hands rode him without a saddle, gripping him tightly with their legs and causing him unfathomable pain. In anger, he refused food for three days and passed away.


Upon his return to the Underworld, the King discovered that Liu had not completed his punishment and alleged that he had tried to evade it. He ordered Liu’s skin to be stripped off and reincarnated him as a dog. Reluctant to go, Liu was beaten by ghosts until he fled into the wilderness. Despairing, he threw himself off a cliff, but rather than dying, he found himself reborn as a puppy in a lair, with a mother dog licking and nurturing him. As he aged, he grew to be able to discern filth and staunchly avoided it. Though he was tempted by its smell, he resolved not to eat such things. After a year as a dog, he often wished to die but feared further punishment for evading his sentence. His owner, however, refused to kill him. In desperation, Liu bit his owner’s thigh, and in retaliation, the owner beat him to death.


Brought before the King of the Underworld once more, Liu was scolded for his tempestuousness and sentenced to be born again as a snake. He was confined to a dark room, removed from the light of day. Suffocated, he slithered up the wall and escaped through a hole in the roof. When he looked at himself, he saw he had become a snake lying in the grass. He resolved not to harm other creatures, and survived by eating fruit. Over a year passed, and he often contemplating ending his life, but could not bring himself to do so. He also refused to harm others to provoke them into killing him. One day, as he lay in the grass, he heard a carriage approaching. He quickly slithered onto the road, and the carriage ran over him, slicing him cleanly in two.


The King of the Underworld was surprised by Liu’s hasty return. Liu pleaded to the King and explained what had happened. The king, seeing that Liu had been killed without fault, took mercy on him and allowed him to complete his sentence by being reborn as a human. This was how Liu Xiaolian came in to being. From birth, he could speak and had an exceptional memory for literature and history. He passed the provincial examination in the and was awarded with a position in the civil service, and would often advised others: ‘When riding a horse, you must always use a thick saddle cloth. The pain of being gripped by the legs is worse than being whipped’.

The historian of the strange remarked that, ‘Among monsters, there are some who were once nobility; by this logic, among the nobility, there are those who were once monsters. Therefore, when the lowly perform good deeds, it is like planting a tree with a view to enjoying its flowers later on; when the noble perform good deeds, it is like nurturing the roots of a tree already in bloom. The efforts of the man who plants the tree can lead to greatness, while the efforts of the man who nurtures the tree can lead to longevity. Otherwise, one may end up pulling salt carts, bound and bridled, living as a horse. Or one may end up eating filth, slaughtered and cooked, living as a dog. Or one may end up covered in scales, devoured by cranes, living as a snake‘.