Strange Tales from Liaozhai - Vol. 2The weird and whimsical short stories in Strange Tales from Liaozhai show their author, Pu Songling (1640-1715), to be both an explorer of the macabre, like Edgar Allan Poe, and a moralist, like Aesop. In this first complete translation of the collection's 494 stories into English, readers will encounter supernatural creatures, natural disasters, magical aspects of Buddhist and Daoist spirituality, and a wide range of Chinese folklore. Annotations are provided to clarify unfamiliar references or cultural allusions, and introductory essays have been included to explain facets of Pu Songling's work and to provide context for some of the unique qualities of his uncanny tales. This is the second of 6 volumes. |
From inside the book
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... one's appointed time, or perhaps one shares a surname or resemblance with the party who was actually supposed to be summoned. Sometimes the deceased persuade underworld officials to let them come back to life to care for children ...
... one's lot in the next one. This is one reason that the Hell King permits no “exchanges” per se of a virtuous individual willing to undergo punishment in order to redeem someone convicted by the underworld court for her or his acts ...
... one's back. Bragging about one's good deeds was punished by being disemboweled. Those who wasted food were ground into meat jam” (Cline and Littlejohn 22). 3 Though there are always exceptions to any rule of underworld procedure: Ma ...
... one's arms around; its hollow center was now filled with blazing coals, so that inside and out it was red hot. A group of attendant ghosts bludgeoned the man with spiked iron caltrops, driving him to climb up the pillar to evade them by ...
... one's gate, like Lü Bu shooting at the head of a halberd; you have to locate the great bow in the kingdom's storehouse if you really want to fight your way through the pass. Otherwise, there's the example of the student who was visited ...