Chinese Ghost Stories - Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio

Book excerpt: Chinese Ghost Stories - Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, is a collection of 164 Classical Chinese stories compiled by Pu Songling. These hair-raising tales focus on the everyday life of commoners and their interaction ghosts, fox spirits, immortals, demons and other spirits. Pu Songling used the supernatural and the unexplainable to illustrate his ideas of society and government. Through the stories he criticized the corruption and injustice in society and sympathized with the poor. With the embedded Confucian-styled moral standards and Taoist principles this collection of supernatural stories. Dating back to the Qing dynasty, its earliest publication date is given as 1740. Since then, many of the critically lauded stories have been adapted for other media such as film and television. Long considered of true classic of Chinese literature, this second edition of Herbert Giles translation, with over 600 footnotes of backstory, provides a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of the Chinese in the time period, while tantalizing the reader with tales of the supernatural.