Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

Lots of fun stories. The most notable theme is sex with fox spirits although there's a good variety of stuff too, with varying morals and conclusions even when the set-up is pretty similar. There's nothing here that made me think "woah that's amazing" hence the 4 star but I enjoyed reading every single story here - there's a lot of cool ideas and overall there's an amazing and absorbing atmosphere that really takes you into the world of the Chinese studio.

The Penguin edition I was using has very helpful notes and a good glossary that help you understand the setting for each story as well as pointing out allusions to classic Chinese literature - although I'd note it relies notably on 19th century sources and stuff quite a bit, dunno how show more some of the explanations of concepts stand up to modern scholarship. 1 story adds the commentary which is apparently standard in the full original Chinese editions. show less

I've been reading a lot of "difficult" books recently, and a few short books that just weren't very good. Amid that pile, Pu's tales were a glorious reminder of why people enjoy telling stories, why people enjoy reading them, and how many different ways something can be interesting.

Short of listing the best stories here, there's not much to review. THere are supernatural tales (ghosts and 'foxes'); there are little anecdotes; there are morality tales; there are anti-morality tales; and most of all there's a kind of joy I just don't get from a lot of contemporary books. I've been recommending this to all of my meat-space friends since I finished reading it. Now I recommend it to my interwebby friends on goodreads: anyone who likes to show more read will love this book.*

As a special bonus, you'll learn a bit about Imperial era China. As a super-extra-special bonus, the editor/translator includes illustrations from a nineteenth century Chinese edition of the text. They are fabulous.


* caveat: this is a book written by a lonely scholar for other lonely scholars, all of whom are men. There's a lot of lady-love wish-fulfillment. It's unfortunate. show less

Boy, they weren’t kidding. These are some strange tales! The introduction in my edition was helpful in putting me in a frame of mind so I wasn’t just thinking “what on earth is this?!” It helped flesh out the setting of the lonely garden studio of a Chinese scholar. I appreciated the choices of the translator, as this edition does not contain all the tales, and thought they did a good job varying between one-page stories and longer ones. Some of the stories are similar, but I think that probably reflects the original, and not the editing choices of the translator. The stories illuminate how ghosts and spirits are different between Western and Chinese traditions—they seem more corporeal for the Chinese; you can even marry them show more and have children! The stories are a good introduction of the idea of fox spirits, those creatures like the selkies and water spirits of Northern Europe, who seduce men, for good or evil. The fox spirits of Chinese culture, however, can also be more like poltergeists that need to be eliminated. I also like that at the end of my edition they gave the original author’s preface with a full annotation, line by line, so that the reader can appreciate the complexity of his writing in a way they could not do for every story.
I wish that my edition included all the stories, though maybe that would be asking for an even more repetitive read. show less

This book contains a large variety of stories, mostly pretty short. Some are quite a bit more interesting than others. But overall, it's an enjoyable collection. The volume also contains copious notes, b/w illustrations, and a long list of references & suggestions for further reading. I like that it's a modern translation, so it's pretty colloquial and easy to read. I.e., it doesn't suffer from the "thee/thou/thine" problem endemic to many overwrought archaizing translations of yesteryear.

[sidebar] This book took me a very long time to read. It's quite long at over 500 pages, but the main reason it took me over 8 years to read (3010 days) is that I put the ebook on my [smart] phone, not my usual reading tablet. Therefore, I partook of show more it only when I was in the position of having to wait around for something, such as standing in queue, sitting in a waiting room, etc. Finished the last four tales today while I was waiting for my car to get smog checked. show less

This collection of over one hundred stories was a fun and quick read for me, despite the fact that some of the story features get repetitive and few stories stood out from the herd. the introduction explains that the collection consists of two types of tales: one type is actual stories, with beginning, middle, and end as well as a theme and often times a lesson. The other type is just bizarre occurrences that Pu Songling heard about and recorded. The latter kind provides short breaks between the former kind, and both are amusing, but few individual stories of either type grabbed my attention or impressed me. If someone were to ask me about this book in a few years I would remember it as a collection of stories about fox spirits and show more ghosts, most of which only seemed interested in seducing humans, but that will probably be about all. One or two tales might stick with me, like the wonderfully bizarre story of a man cursed with blindness whose pupils decide to leave his eyes, or the humorous story of a dandy who pretends to hang himself in order to make a girl laugh, only to actually choke himself to death, but the vast majority of the tales aren't memorable. Despite this, reading the collection was a lot of fun, and I found it much more accessible than most Chinese literature. Thus I rate this collection four stars. If ghost stories or Chinese folklore is your thing then by all means give this one a read. show less

The book contains a collection of a little over 100 tales from Pu Songling's original 500 , which is rather unfortunate, as I would love to read all of them. I was hooked from the very first tale and took every opportunity to read more. Granted, some tales are mere curiosities that I don't find particularly appealing (for example, an account of a man with a dozen frogs that were trained to croak on cue and in "perfect pitch"), but most were enthralling. The tales have a broad range of subjects, although most were dealing with either fox-spirits or ghost, yet every one was different and unique.The translator's preface was good as well and helped to put things in the proper perspective. The notes and a glossary at the back also are great show more for those, like myself, not familiar with the broader Chinese literature. The only complaint I have -- and even that is more my fault than the editor's -- is that I didn't realize there were notes until I was practically done with the book. It would have been helpful to have footnote-style annotation in the text of the tales to give some indication that this particular line/word is explained in the notes. As things stand, if you run across something that you don't understand, you just have to flip to the back and hope there is a note about it. That said, the notes are thorough and provide a lot of added content. show less

An excellent selection of "weird tales" by the master of Chinese weird fiction. Since being first written, Pu Songling's Strange Tales have been the benchmark for this genre, and also the standard for Classical Chinese fiction. Some tales are short, but perfectly conjure up bizarre creatures and haunted places; others are longer, with well-developed characters and plots. John Minford has translated these tales expertly and provides ample notes and background to both Pu Songling's life and times, and the genre itself.