Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio - Definition

Liaozhai Zhiyi (聊斋志异, "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio") is a conflation of 431 supernatural tales written by Pu Songling (1640 - 1715) during the early Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911). Written in classical Chinese (wenyan or guwen), it was first circulated in manuscript form before it was published posthumously by his grandson in 1740.

Pu borrows from a folk tradition of oral storytelling to put to paper a series of captivating, highly colorful stories where the boundary between reality and the odd or fantastic is successively blurred. Amongst his cast of characters include vixen spirits, ghosts, scholars, court officials, Taoist exorcists and even beasts. Spirits are often shown to be bold and trustworthy, while humans are on the other hand weak, indecisive and easily manipulated. Moral purpose are often inverted between humans and the supposedly degenerate ghosts or spirits, resulting in a satirical and individual edge to some of the stories. Pu is believed to have completed the tales some time in 1679.

Liaozhai Zhiyi has inspired countless Chinese film adaptations, including those by King Hu ("Painted Skin"), Tsui Hark ("A Chinese Ghost Story" series) and the Taiwanese director Li Han-Hsiang.

The Czech writer Franz Kafka is known to admire some of these tales in translation, where (in a letter to Felice; Jan 16, 1913) he had described them to be "exquisite".