Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Volumes 1 and 2)

STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO.
TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY HERBERT A. GILES, Of H.M.’s Consular Service .
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: THOS. DE LA RUE & CO. 110, BUNHILL ROW.
1880 .
PRINTED BY THOMAS DE LA RUE AND CO., BUNHILL ROW, LONDON.
TO MY WIFE AND OUR CHILDREN: BERTRAM , LIONEL , VALENTINE , LANCELOT .


—The barest skeleton of a biography is all that can be formed from the very scanty materials which remain to mark the career of a writer whose work has been for the best part of two centuries as familiar throughout the length and breadth of China as are the tales of the “Arabian Nights” in all English-speaking communities. The author of “Strange Stories” was a native of Tzu-chou, in the province of Shan-tung. His family name was P‘u; his particular name was Sung-ling; and the designation or literary epithet by which, in accordance with Chinese usage, he was commonly known among his friends, was Liu-hsien, or “Last of the Immortals.” A further fancy name, given to him probably by some enthusiastic admirer, was Liu Ch‘üan, or “Willow Spring;” but he is now familiarly spoken of simply as P‘u Sung-ling. We are unacquainted with the years of his birth or death; however, by the aid of a meagre entry in the History of Tzü-chou it is possible to make a pretty good guess at the date of the former event. For we are there told that P‘u Sung-ling successfully competed for the lowest or bachelor’s degree before he had reached the age of twenty; and that in 1651 he was in the position of a graduate of ten years’ standing, having failed in the interim to take the second, or master’s, degree. To this failure, due, as we are informed in the history above quoted, to his neglect of the beaten track of academic study, we owe the existence of his great work; not, indeed, his only production, though the one par excellence by which, as Confucius said of his own “Spring and Autumn,” men will know him. All else that we have on record of P‘u Sung-ling, besides the fact that he lived in close companionship with several eminent scholars of the day, is gathered from his own words, written when, in 1679, he laid down his pen upon the completion of a task which was to raise him within a short period to a foremost rank in the Chinese world of letters. Of that record I here append a close translation, accompanied by such notes as are absolutely necessary to make it intelligible to non-students of Chinese.