Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, known to the Chinese as the Liao-Chai-Chih-I, or more familiarly, the Liao-Chai, was written by Pu Songling in 1679.

“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:

010  The Magic Sword

024  Perseverance Rewarded

034  Chang’s Transformation

046  The Pated Wall

052  The Country of the Cannibals

066  The Talking Pupils

072  Miss Lien-hsiang

094  The Sisters

102  The Virtuous Daughter-in-law

116  The Flower Nymphs

130  The Painted Skin

140  The Princess Lily

150  Miss Chiao-no

164  The Man Who Was Changed into a Crow