“I would here draw attention to one most important point; namely, that although a great number of books have been published about China and the Chinese, there are extremely few in which the information is conveyed at first hand…it undoubtedly is that many Chinese customs are ridiculed and condemned by turns, simply because the medium through which they have been conveyed has produced a distorted image. Much of what the Chinese do actually believe and practise in their religious and social life will be found in this volume, in the ipsissima verba of a highly-educated scholar writing about his fellow-countrymen and his native land; while for the notes with which I have essayed to make the picture more suggestive and more acceptable to the European eye, I claim only so much authority as is due to the opinion of one qualified observer who can have no possible motive in deviating ever so slightly from what his own personal experience has taught him to regard as the truth.”

Herbert A. Giles, 1880

In this edition you will find the following stories:

The  Lo-ch’a Country and The Sea-Market

Ying Ning

The Magnanimous Girl

In The Infernal Regions

Hsiang-Ju’s Misfortunes

The Wonderful Stone

The Princess of The Tongting Lake

The Rat Wife

The Lost Brother

The Boat-Girl Ride

The Chrysanthemum Spirits