Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

Pu Songling · 1766 · 6 essays

Six essays on Pu Songling’s 聊斋志异 and the playable version of it: what kind of book roughly five hundred short tales add up to, what really happens in Painted Skin, whether this book’s foxes and ghosts are monsters or the love interest, why one of its stories has been filmed over and over since 1960, where its most quoted sentence actually comes from, and the handful of characters its stories keep casting. The 1880 English translation is free; the game is over here.

Role-play Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio All book essays

A black-and-white woodblock plate from the 1886 illustrated edition Xiangzhu Liaozhai Zhiyi Tuyong, printed in the plain linear style of late Qing book illustration, accompanying the tale Xu Huangliang

Is Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio Worth Reading? Where to Start with Pu Songling's Ghost Stories

Nearly five hundred short tales, not a novel. The translator who gave English its version kept 164 of them, threw the rest away, and said so in his introduction.

September 12, 2026 · 8 min read

An ink-painted page from Luo Ping's eighteenth-century album of ghost paintings, loose brushed figures on toned paper, held on long-term loan by the Honolulu Museum of Art

Painted Skin, Explained: The Demon Behind Liaozhai's Most Famous Ghost Story

Modern versions make the demon a woman wronged into monstrosity. Pu Songling gives her no history and no excuse, and the scholar who took her in never gets a warning he is willing to hear.

September 12, 2026 · 8 min read

A second ink-painted leaf from Luo Ping's eighteenth-century album of ghost paintings, pale washed figures against an empty ground, held on long-term loan by the Honolulu Museum of Art

Villain or Victim?

Are Liaozhai's Fox Spirits and Ghosts Villains, or Victims?

Search for what fox spirits are and the internet hands you a monster. Open Pu Songling and the fox marries the household's useless son and improves him.

September 12, 2026 · 8 min read

A woodblock plate from the 1886 illustrated edition Xiangzhu Liaozhai Zhiyi Tuyong, accompanying the tale of Traveller Tong, printed as plain black line work with a column of classical Chinese verse beside it

Best Chinese Ghost Story Adaptations: Why Liaozhai Keeps Getting Remade

A scholar lodges at a derelict temple, a ghost is sent to kill him, the swordsman next door is not what he says. Almost nobody who has watched a version has read the six pages.

September 12, 2026 · 9 min read

Kuncan's seventeenth-century hanging scroll Wooded Mountains at Dusk, a tall ink landscape of wooded slopes fading into mist, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Not From Any Story

The Most Famous Line from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio Isn't in Any of the Stories

Ask what the most quoted line from Pu Songling is and the English-language internet has no settled answer. The line people do carry away is in the front matter, about himself.

September 12, 2026 · 7 min read

A Qing-dynasty ritual hanging scroll from the Capital Museum in Beijing, painted in mineral colour on silk, showing robed underworld officials of the infernal bureaucracy in formal procession

Four Recurring Types

A Guide to Liaozhai's Recurring Characters: the Scholar, the Fox Spirit, and the Underworld Judge

Read twenty of these tales in a row and you start recognising the cast before the plot arrives. The names change every time and the parts do not.

September 12, 2026 · 9 min read