Pu Songling

Pu Songling passed the lowest level of the imperial examinations early and brilliantly, then failed the higher levels repeatedly for the rest of his life, scraping by for decades as a private tutor and secretary to local officials in his native Zibo, Shandong, a frustration that colors much of his fiction's sympathy for talented outsiders shut out of advancement.

Legend holds he set out tea and tobacco at a roadside stall to draw travelers into telling him strange stories, which he then reworked in polished classical prose; whether or not the stall is true, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio gathers nearly five hundred tales of fox spirits, ghosts, and shape-shifters, many using the supernatural to needle corrupt officials, hypocritical scholars, and unjust marriages.

The collection circulated only in hand-copied manuscript during his lifetime and for decades after his death in 1715, not appearing in print until 1766, after which it became one of the most widely read and adapted works in Chinese literature, still supplying material for opera, film, and television.