A word about the texts on this site, because the trust of the reader is the only asset a site like this has.
What these translations are
Every story here is rendered directly from the classical Chinese original, all of which is in the public domain. We do not consult or adapt existing English translations; each rendering is original work. Where a tale is very long, we condense — and say so, in italics, at the end of the text. The original Chinese is attached to every story in a collapsible panel, so that readers with the language can check us. We would rather be caught in an error than suspected of one.
The aim is readable literary English, not a crib. Classical Chinese is famously compressed — a line of six characters can hold a scene — and a word-for-word rendering would be unreadable. So we expand where the original implies, keep its restraint where the original is restrained, and never invent plot. When the text says the ghost ‘changed shape and changed shape again’, you get that, and not a paragraph of zoology we imagined.
Names
Chinese personal names are given family-name first, in pinyin without tone marks: Nie Xiaoqian, Liu Yi, Pu Songling. Titles of books are given in pinyin with an English gloss at first mention: Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio). Place names follow standard pinyin: Dongting, Handan, Mount Kunlun.
A small set of creatures and roles we keep in English with the Chinese attached at first use — fox spirit (huli), ghost (gui), immortal (xian), the Courts of the Dead (difu) — because these are terms of art, and flattening them into ‘demon’, ‘soul’ and ‘hell’ would import the wrong mythology. The Key Concepts guide and the Glossary hold the full working vocabulary.
Cultural notes
Each story carries a short block of cultural notes — the examination system, the Lantern Festival, the fly-whisk of the travelling exorcist — the things a seventeenth-century reader brought to the tale that a modern reader cannot be expected to. These are original to this site and are, we think, as important as the translations themselves: they are the difference between reading a story and understanding one.
Sources
Every story names its collection, its author where known, and its approximate date, and links out to nothing we cannot stand behind. Where authorship is traditional rather than certain — as with the Soushen Houji, attributed to Tao Qian — we say ‘attributed to’. Where a tale exists in several versions, we follow the earliest substantial one and note the choice.
If you find an error — a mistranslation, a wrong date, a misattribution — tell us. A library like this is only as good as its corrections.