THE STRANGE DAOISM OF PU SONGLING

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of

San Francisco State University
In partial fulfillment of
the requirements for
the Degree

Master o f Arts

In

Humanities

by

Christopher David Rubin

San Francisco, California

Fall 2017
 Copyright by
Christopher David Rubin
2017
 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read The Strange Daoism o f Pu Songling by Christopher David Rubin,

and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in

partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master o f Arts in Humanities at San

Francisco State University.

Cristina Ruotolo, Ph.D.

Professor of Humanities
 THE STRANGE DAOISM OF PU SONGLING

Christopher David Rubin

San Francisco, California
2017

This thesis explores the ways in which stories from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a
Chinese Studio draw from the earlier Daoist work the Book o f Zhuangzi. While Pu
Songling’s work contains Daoist moral themes similar to those o f Zhuangzi’s earlier
collection, this analysis will show that, in both collections, the way in which the stories
are conveyed is just as important as their particular moral maxims. In the Book o f
Zhuangzi, this emphasis on style is embodied by the characters within the stories
themselves, who communicate Daoist principles through their strange appearance.
Finding the link between Daoism and the strange, this thesis explores the ways in which
Daoism might penetrate Pu Songling’s entire collection, as only a small amount of the
stories have clear moral maxims.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Mary Scott for all of her much needed advice, and, further, for
pointing me toward the works that follow. Additionally, I’d like to thank my family for
all of their support.
 1

Tan Jinxuan, a first degree graduate of my home district of Zichuan,

was a great believer in Daoist Yoga. He practiced it assiduously for

several months, regardless of the weather, and seemed to be

making some progress (Pu Songling, “Homunculus, Strange Tales

from a Chinese Studio).

With this line, John Minford opens his translation of Pu Songling’s eighteenth

century story collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. The story

continues: Tan, the graduate, marks his spiritual progress by the growth of a

buzzing sound, a sound which seems almost like a voice: “I think I’m taking

shape” it whispers. After a few days of Daoist practice, the voice changes: “Most

definitely taking shape”—a change which the excited Tan takes to be the sound of

approaching enlightenment, of the “Inner Elixir of Immortality.” However, one

day, during a particularly overzealous session of meditation, something climbs

out of Tan’s ear: far from being the voice of the famed Elixir, the voice instead

belongs to a small “yaksha-demon.” To his downfall, the creature is scared away

by the unexpected knocking of a neighbor, leaving Tan in “utter desolation, as if

his very soul had gone missing...taken with a violent fit...howling hysterically.” He

only recovers after six months of steady treatment (Minford 5).

A strange story, but strange as it may be, it would seem as though Pu

Songling wants us to believe it, believe that it actually occurred. After all, he tells

us in the very first line that the events of the story took place in his home district.

Pu Songling might be a waishi shi, an “unofficial historian,” but he is a historian

 2

nonetheless, or, as he calls himself, a Historian o f the Strange (Zeitlin 1). And he

certainly makes it appear as though he’s trying to write history: almost every

story in Strange Tales has some detail, some statement which suggests to us that

yes, this event, though strange, happened in our world.

For example, the author, or, should I say, the Historian, is always quick to

show us his sources. He even witnessed the events of “Stealing a Peach” himself:

“When I was a boy, I went up to the prefectural city of Ji’nan to take

an examination. It was the time of the Spring Festival and,

according to custom, on the day before the festival all the

merchants of the place processed with decorated banners and

drums to the provincial yamen. This procession was called Bringing

in the Spring. I went with a friend to watch the fun.” (Minford 43)

The story does go on to depict a boy climbing into the heavens to steal a peach

from the “Queen Mother of the West.” The boy gets dismembered, decapitated

and revived in a basket before the author’s eyes. But it’s all true: Pu Songling saw

it—he tells us so.

Other stories, he relates, come from friends or acquaintances:

With time

And my love of hoarding,

The matter sent me by friends

From the four corners of the world

Has grown into a pile (Minford 455)

 3

One tale, as John Minford writes, even has “our author collecting tales at the

roadside, offering casual passersby cups of tea and pipes of tobacco for strange or

unusual anecdotes” (Minford xv). Wherever the author heard it, he is quick to tell

us the source—often in the very first line: “The Troll” comes from Sun Taibo (28).

“Biting a Ghost” comes from Shin Linsheng (31). “The Devoted Mouse” comes

from Yang Tianyi (180).

One might cast doubt on the reliability of these accounts heard at second

or third or fourth hand. The Historian, however, is always sure to ease our

doubts, telling us exactly when and where the story happened: again, where and

when it happened in ourworld, the world of historical truth. In fact, we might

even remember it: “Wailing Ghosts” begins “[a]t the time of the Xie Qian troubles

in Shandong— “Thumb and Thimble” comes from “the region of Zhending

County” (Minford 104-107). Occasionally, the Historian is ever more specific: the

events in “An Earthquake” occurred “[b]etween the hours of seven and nine in

the evening of the seventeenth day of the sixth month of the seventh year of the

Kangxi reign” (182).

However, despite the great lengths to which Pu Songling goes to convince

readers of his stories’ truth, commentators, writing even before the book was

published in full, knew something else was going on beyond waishi, beyond

unofficial history, beyond mere chronicle. As Judith Zeitlin notes in her work

Historian o f the Strange, Ji Yun, an eighteenth century commentator, was in fact

disturbed by the Historian’s extreme attempts to authenticate his stories. Pu

 4

Songling’s ability to source each story and describe events and characters in

incredible detail, rather than convince readers of the stories’ truth, actually,

according to Ji Yun, alert us to their inauthenticity. For example, many of the

stories happen in spaces where neither Pu Songling nor one of his sources could

have observed the events, for example, in a bedchamber. How could anyone

know, especially with so much detail, exactly what went on? Ji Yun writes,

“Now... [Pu Songling] gives a vivid picture of the smallest details

down to amorous gestures and secrets whispered before lovers. It

would be unreasonable to assume the writer experienced these

things himself; but if he was describing things that happened to

others, how could he have known so much?” (Zeitlin 40)

For Ji Yun, this reveals Pu Songling to be nothing more than, as Zeitlin puts it, a

“bad historian” whose “narrative techniques too obviously betray authorial

fabrication” (40).

However, for other early scholars, even attempting to judge the work as

history appeared to be a mistake. As the eighteenth century painter-poet Yu Ji

wrote, “Comparing it to Qixie’s book of marvels or saying that it differs little from

collections of rare phenomena or strange tales is a very shallow view and one that

greatly contradicts the author’s intent” (Zeitlin 26). Under this reading, Pu

Songling’s attempts at verification are obviously only half-attempts: the Historian

is playing with us. As Zeitlin notes, the tales, to these commentators,

 5

“deliberately straddle the border between fictional and historical discourse and

are indeed predicated in part on the ensuing ambiguity” (5 [italics my own]).

Further, as Zeitlin also notes, once one puts aside the possibility that Pu

Songling was simply collecting and reporting strange tales, admitting authorial

intention, the question then becomes what is the intention? What is Pu Songling

saying? What do the tales mean? As she writes, “as the emphasis shifted from the

content of Liaozhai [Strange Tales] to its author’s intention, a general allegorical

reading of the tales perhaps became inevitable” (Zeitlin 30).

However, this way of reading the work,—as a set of stories which have

underlying meanings and morals—far from being a later innovation, appeared

even at the time of its earliest commentaries. As Zeitlin notes, Gao Heng, writing

the first preface for the book, used the word yuyan to describe the tales, a word

which Zeitlin renders as “allegory, metaphor and parable” (Zeitlin 30-31). Even

the author himself seems to suggest that the tales should be read for their

underlying meaning in his preface to the work—albeit obliquely:

Fastidious readers of my book

May mock me,

Just as the Tale of the Five-Fathers Crossroad

May be baseless—

But who can tell?

The Tale of Three-Lives Rock

May contain
 6

Food for enlightenment (Minford 455).

As John Minford notes in his commentary, “The Tale of Three-Lives Rock” comes

from an earlier collection of Buddhist and Daoist tales, which frequently served a

didactic function. Pu Songling, in his preface, seems to liken his stories to this

earlier collection: they maybe false, or they may have something to teach u

For the early commentators, the parable-like nature of Pu Songling’s

stories had roots in the past: for both Gao Heng and Tang Menglai, the second

commentator, Strange Tales belonged to a rich Daoist storytelling tradition

exemplified by the early work the Book o f Zhuangzi, which, as A.C. Graham

notes, took its final form almost fourteen hundred years before Strange Tales

was published in full (Graham 27). Even later commentators make this

connection. Feng Zhenluan, in his early-nineteenth century preface to the work,

gave readers a piece of advice: “This book should be read as one reads The Book

o f Zhuangzi” (Minford xxv). As Judith Zeitlin points out, Pu Songling himself

noted his affinity for the early writer in his preface to a now lost anthology of

Zhuangzi’s sayings: “The extraordinary writing of the past stops with Zhuangzi

and Liezi... I have always loved those books” ( Zeitlin 230).

Even a cursory reading of Strange Tales confirms this admiration: often

Pu Songling’s stories, like Zhuangzi’s before him, seem deliberately constructed

to illustrate the truth of Daoist principles. This can be seen in “Homunculus,” told

above: to an unknowing reader, the story appears to critique Daoism, Daoists,

and their practices; however, a reader with some knowledge of the Daodejing, the
 7

foundational Daoist work attributed to Laozi, the moral of the story itself Daoist

at heart. As He Shouqi and Dan Minglun explain in their nineteenth century

commentary, “Homunculus” is a story about a man who abuses spirituality for

his own ends. Minford summarizes their commentary, writing “pretentious

vanity exposes [practitioners] to strange apparitions, and ultimately they make

fools of themselves.” He goes on to link this with the phenomenon of “spiritual

materialism” coined by the twentieth century Tibetan Buddhist Master Chogyam

Trungpa, a phenomenon where “the ego [attempts] to acquire and apply the

teachings of spirituality for its own benefit (Minford 500).

This is a teaching that has deep roots in the Daoist tradition. Turning to

the Daodejing, consider this oft-quoted passage from Chapter 38:

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness

And is therefore good.

A foolish man tries to be good,

A nd is th e re fo re n o t good.

A truly good man does nothing,

Yet nothing is left undone.

A foolish man is always doing,

Yet much remains to be done.

As Max Kaltenmark notes in Lao Tzu and Daoism, his Daodejing commentary,

Daoism has nothing to do with the personal gain of any state of virtue,

any special feeling; rather, it is only by emptying oneself of all personal pursuits,
 8

aims, and states that one can be in accord with the Dao. This accord, rather than

being a personal achievement resulting from an endeavor initiated by the s e lf-

translated above as “doing and trying”— is the result of the motion of the

(Kaltenmark 49-50). This is why the “truly good” man is “not aware of his

goodness” and “does nothing.” He knows that the only Good belongs to the Dao,

and as such, doing nothing, he allows the Dao to move instead: a movement

called De—
virtue, power.

In “Homunculus” Tan Jinxuan, in his search for the Elixir of Mortality, is

excited by the prospect of becoming virtuous, of becoming personally

enlightened. Thus, after becoming aware of the possibility of gaining a special or

virtuous state signified by the whispers, he practices harder and harder, selfishly

pursuing his own ends. However, as Pu Songling shows, this, far from being

something virtuous, is in fact a merely human obsession: a manifestation of a

demonic, self-seeking behavior, symbolized by the appearance of the being that

emerges from his ear.

This moral is even repeated in the very next story in Minford’s selection,

“An Otherwordly Examination: “a man named Song Tao, after lying ill in bed,

finds himself being interviewed for a position by supernatural deities, one of

which is “The God of War.” Though he wins the position after writing a short

essay, Song Tao, being more concerned with others—in this case, his own “aged

mother”—than with the growth of his career, turns down the position, allowing it

to be rewarded to a Mr. Zhang. When he awakes “as if from a dream” Song

 9

receives word that a Mr. Zhang died the very same day that he fell into delirium,

revealing the nature of the position to which he, Song, was almost appointed: he

was to fulfill the position of “City God”—a divine position requiring that one die

as a human being to take it up. Unlike Tan from “Homunculus,” Song’s actions

proceeded from “benevolence” rather than a desire for his own gain, allowing him

to avoid an early death. As John Minford recognizes in his own commentary, the

emphasis on ,“motive” or “intention,” a theme in the first two stories of the

in
x

collection, borrows from the Daoist wisdom described above. In fact, the essay

with which Song initially wins his position reads almost like lines from the Dao

De Jing: “virtue pursued with intent warrants no merit” (Minford 7-8).

This theme reaches its apogee in the story “The Daoist Priest of Mount

Lao.” The story begins by introducing a young “gentlemen by the name of Wang.”

Like Tan Jinxuan from “Homunculus,” Wang has taken up an interest in Daoist

practices. As the story progresses, his interest reveals itself to be motivated

largely by curiosity and the promise of gain. Hearing that Mount Lao is occupied

by a group of Daoist adepts, Wang sets off to make an inquiry. After seeing one

monk who seems possessed with “vitality” Wang, without a second thought, asks

to be this man’s disciple. The monk, however, rebuffs his request: “You are too

accustomed to a soft life... I fear the hardship will be more than you can bear.”

Wang insists and, upon waking the next day, is given an axe to cut wood with the

other monks. As the months go by, Wang is promised of even greater powers, as

the head priest performs a number of miracles: he makes a piece of paper

 10

illuminate a dark room “in dazzling light.” Next, he pours out wine for the

assembled monks, filling all their glasses out of a single, small jug. Finally, the

priest makes a young woman appear in the center of the illuminating paper. She

recites a poem for all the monks. Then three of the monks get up and enter the

small circle of paper, enquiring, “Will you gentlemen accompany us for a last cup

of farewell in the Palace of the Moon?” (Minford 51). As the author notes, at this

sight, all of Wang’s doubts evaporate, and he throws himself fully into his labor.

However, after another month passes, Wang has still not accomplished anything.

Uttering a statement that both states his frustration and reveals the self-seeking

nature of his quest, Wang appeals to the priest:

I came here from a great distance to sit at your feet, Master. Even if

I could not learn the Art of Immortality [the same art Tan Jinxuan

hoped to learn], I thought at least to acquire some minor

accomplishment with which to nourish my spiritual aspirations. But

alas, for these three months I have done nothing but chip wood all

day and return exhausted in the evening to sleep (Minford 52).

He begs the priest further: “For all these days I have labored, give me some

trifling skill to take away with me, so that I will not go home empty handed.” He

asks the priest to teach him the art of walking through walls, which he does by

giving Wang a mantra to accomplish the task. Wang performs the task in front of

the priest and sets out for home. Once home, hoping to demonstrate the skill to

his wife, he charges at a wall full speed, meeting it with a thud. The story
 11

concludes: “His wife helped him up, looking at the egg sized bump that was

starting to emerge on his forehead and burst out laughing. Wang was bitterly

angry, and cursed the monk for a scoundrel” (53). Pu Songling, giving his own

commentary, curses both the “vanity” of young men in pseudo-spiritual pursuits

and the spiritual phonies who feed off of their ambition.

These stories, and the other stories like them which unfold over the pages

of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio seem, in their morals, to express classical

Daoist truths. Here, however, I’d like to ask a question: is it only the moral of

these stories that is Daoist? Put another way: is the only Daoist element of these

stories an underlying “meaning-content” which is reached by means of a parable?

To both answer and clarify this question, one should turn to the Book o f

Zhuangzi, the book of Daoist parables to which Strange Tales from a Chinese

Studio is most often compared. In examining this earlier work, one sees that it

does indeed convey principles from its predecessor the Daodejing in parable

form. However, a close examination of the Book o f Zhuangzi reveals that the

tales, not only convey Daoist principles, they embody them as well.

As Martin Palmer details in his introduction to his translation of the Book

o f Zhuangzi, the earliest anecdotes about Zhuangzi and his life come from the

Chinese historian Sima Qian, writing in the first century BC. The historian

describes what he sees as Zhuangzi’s motive in writing the tales, “to refute the

arguments of the Confucians” and to “glorify the mysteries of Laozi” (Palmer xv).
 12

As Max Kaltenmark notes, to the early Confucianists, the Dao or “Way”

represented something like a “code of behavior” or rules of “moral guidance”

(Kaltenmark 48). To be a good Confucian meant studying these codes of conduct

and learning to apply them in one’s life. As Kaltenmark notes, however, “Laozi

condemns all learning” (48). Laozi, the author to whom the Daodejing is

ascribed, writes

When the great Dao falls into disuse, the virtues of human­

heartedness and righteousness arise.

When intellect emerges, the great artifices begin.

When discord is rife in families, dutiful sons appear.

When the State falls into anarchy, loyal subjects appear

Banish wisdom, discard knowledge, and the people will benefit a

hundredfold

Banish human-heartedness, discard righteousness, and the people

will return to true familial virtues.

Banish ingenuity, discard profit, and there will be no more thieves

and brigands (Chapters 18 and 19, Kaltenmark 50)

Reading these passages, it seems as though Laozi is recommending lawlessness

and anarchy to his readers, encouraging them to act in whatever way they decide.

As Kaltenmark notes, this reading completely misses Laozi’s point. He notes that

the words “human-heartedness” and “righteousness”— and y in Chinese—

 13

represent “the supreme virtues of Confucianism” which he describes as “respect

for convention, law” (50). The chapters’ mention of “intellect” or “knowledge,”

“dutiful sons” and “loyal subjects” represent the other Confucian virtues:

intelligence, filial piety, and loyalty. The passage, far from recommending

lawlessness, actually recommends complete submission to the Dao. When one

submits to the Dao, one, quite unconsciously, lives a virtuous life, the life of De.

As described above, this life is lived not through one’s consciously initiated efforts

but through the Dao working through oneself. When the Dao is present in one’s

life, harmony is naturally established; however, when “the great Dao falls into

disuse” one consciously strives to maintain order through small-minded efforts,

learning morals by rote, forcing them into one’s life: forcing oneself to mimic

these acts, forcing one’s family to oneself, forcing one’s people to maintain order.

In the end, the Confucian, force-based morals were only introduced to contain a

society that had departed from the Dao.

This sentiment is echoed throughout the pages of the Book ofZhuangzi. In

what is generally held to be the fifth chapter, translated by A.C. Graham as “The

signs of fullness of power,” the writer, who may or may not have been a man

named Zhuangzi, tells four stories in a row that illustrate the principles described

above in the Daodejing.

In the first of these stories, Confucius is consulted by a man named Chang

Qi about “a man with a chopped foot” named “Wang Tai” (Graham 76). Chang Qi

then informs Confucius that this man, who has as many disciples as Confucius
 14

himself, has a completely different teaching method: “When he stands up he

doesn’t teach, when he sits down, he doesn’t talk things over, yet [his disciples]

go to him empty and come away full.” Chang Qi asks Confucius, “Is there indeed a

wordless teaching, or a heart which is whole though the body is deformed? What

man is this?” Confucius, who is more humble here than he is at other places in

the Book o f Zhuangzi, has a surprising response: that the man is a great sage and

a much better teacher than Confucius himself. And, following Chang Qi’s “what

kind of a man is this?” the writer ventriloquizes Confucius and pronounces him a

man “aware of the Flawless and [is] not aware of other things” who “uses his wits

to discover his heart, his heart to discover the unchanging heart beyond it.” His

stillness teaches because “[o]nly the still can still whatever is stilled” (Graham 76-

77).

This story gives physical form to the claims of the Daodejing mentioned

above: only a stilling of one’s own actions and a hearkening to the Dao can still

others. This is a stillness in action which is itself virtue. The second and third

stories go on to illustrate the same principle in their own ways each using the foils

of Confucius and a man with “a chopped foot.” Here, it is important to note why

exactly the men in these stories have chopped feet to begin with. As Eske

Mollgaard explains in An Introduction to Daoist Thought, this was a common

punishment for criminals in the Confucian Chinese state. The mutilated men in

these stories come from Lu, “where Confucius himself had been the police
 15

commissioner” (Mollgaard 110). The character’s physical form, then, bears

witness to their lack of adherence to Confucian moral codes.

In the third of these tales, the mutilated man is chastised by Confucius for

being so silly as to lose his foot; however, Confucius is reprimanded for not

realizing a certain fact: that it much better to lose a foot and, with it, society's

approval, than to lose something more precious, the Dao (Graham 77-78)! The

man had come to ask Confucius in what way he could preserve the latter but,

upon hearing Confucius’ response, realizes that he cannot offer assistance. After

this encounter, the man with the chopped foot relates the whole account to Laozi,

commenting, as Palmer has it, “he seems caught up with the search for honor and

reputation, without appearing to understand that the perfect man sees these as

chains and irons” (Palmer 41).

The fourth story, though substituting the character who foils Confucius

with “a hideous man called Uglyface Tuo,” continues along the same lines. Here,

the Duke of Ai challenges Confucius’ set of morals by referring to this man: Tuo,

though so ugly, is followed by all: young men wish to be his dutiful sons, women

wish to be his wife, large crowds gather around him yet he doesn’t enforce the

Confucian values of filial piety or loyalty to bring people to himself. Further, he

doesn’t act in a conspicuously virtuous way: as Martin Palmer translates, “he was

always in accord with others” (Palmer 41). Additionally, he was completely

unlearned when it came to higher morals, “in knowledge content to stay with the

ordinary.” However, as the Duke states, “this was obviously a man with
 16

something different about him” (Graham 79). What so attracted people to this

man? What was so different about him? An inner vitality, authenticity—what

Graham often calls “spontaneity”— set him apart from other men, though this

man did nothing consciously to set himself apart. The moral of the stories is

explained in the lines which immediately follow, but, again, through two more

stories:

Cripple Lipless with crooked legs advised the Duke Ling of Wey; the

Duke was so pleased with him that when he looked at normal men

their legs were too lanky. Pitcherneck with the big goitre advised

Duke Huan of Qi; the Duke was so pleased with him that when he

looked at normal men their necks were too scrawny. To the extent

then that [De] stands out we lose sight of bodily shape (Graham

80).

Each of these stories in turn serves to illustrate exactly what is meant by

Chapters 18 and 19 of the Daodejing: where Confucius is focused on making

things appear right, forcing things to fit this pattern, the Daoist focuses wholly

upon the Dao. And though things may not appear right, they are actually righted.

But are these stories merely proving Daoist points?

I’d like to compare these writings from the Inner Chapters to their

counterparts in the Outer Chapters. The Book ofZhuangzi, as A.C. Graham

explains, the Book ofZhuangzi, though traditionally attributed to a single author

named Zhuangzi is actually a diverse set of documents which began forming

 17

around the time Zhuangzi is supposed to have lived, somewhere between 300 to

370 BC, before being finally collected in 312 AD (Graham 3, 27). Traditionally

these documents were arranged into three groups: the Inner Chapters, The Outer

Chapters, and The Mixed Chapters. The Inner Chapters, from which I’ve quoted

above, are “homogeneous in thought and style and generally recognized as

substantially the work of [Zhuangzi] him self’ (Graham 27). Of the Outer and

Mixed chapters, “none can be plausibly ascribed to Zhuangzi” (Graham 28).

These sets reflect the efforts of a group of authors who, though concerned with

similar points, beliefs, and themes as the Inner Chapters, reflected many diverse

schools of thought— “Syncretist,” “Yangist,” and “Primitivist” to name a few. To

put it simply, the Inner Chapters are the most ian stories in the book of

Zhuangzi.

The Outer Chapters, like the Inner Chapters, include a set of stories about

Confucius, but they lack a certain something possessed by their earlier

counterparts. Though there are roughly seven whole episodes, I’d like to point out

moments from two of them. Each of the seven episodes contains an exchange

between Confucius and “Old Dan,” another name for Laozi, traditionally held to

be the founder of Daoism. In one of these encounters, Confucius asks Old Dan if

the Way can be studied as one studies “correlatives.” As A.C. Graham describes in

his work Yin-Yang and the Nature o f Correlative Thinking, the study of

correlatives was a kind of “proto-science” that pervaded classical Chinese thought

(7). It was thought that the universe could be arranged around the numbers two,
 18

four, and five—two for the cosmic principles of light and dark, and yang, and

four and five for the “Four Seasons, Four Directions, Five Colors, Five Sounds,

Five Tastes, [and] Five Smells” (Yin-Yang l). Confucius, in asking if the Way can

be studied as one studies correlatives, asks if the Way can be discovered through

a kind of scientific study, finding patterns in nature and acting accordingly. Old

Dan responds that “[t]his is a slave’s drudgery, an artisan’s bondage, wearing out

the body, fretting the heart,” before finally pointing out,

To study anything belongs to the way of man. To forget all about

things, forget all about Heaven, the name for that is “forgetfulness

of self,” and it is the man who is forgetful of self who may be said to

enter the realm of Heaven. (Graham 132)

In another episode, Confucius states that he has studied “the six Classics,”

historical, ritual, and divination documents described in the Analects, Confucius’

own sayings, as tomes of great wisdom. He affirms to Old Dan that he “knows

their contents thoroughly” and yet he cannot use his knowledge to give advice to

other princes. Old Tan tells him that the Six Classics fail to show the source from

which they flowed. He says,

The six Classics are the worn footprints of the former kings, not

what they used to imprint! What you speak of now is still the

footprints, and the footprints are where the shoes passed, they are

not the shoes! (Graham 133)

 19

These stories, like the stories above from the Inner Chapters, advance the

critique of Confucianism rooted in the earlier Daodejing: the philosopher is too

focused upon external conditions—external conditions abstracted from texts and

subsequently used to manipulate and shape the surrounding world. As it is

written in Chapter 18 of the Daodejing, “When intellect emerges, the great

artifices begin” (Kaltenmark 50). Confucius ultimately pays too much attention to

the trace that the Tao once left, its appearance, rather than hearkening to the

inner reality of the Dao. However, these later stories from the Outer ,

though they critique certain kinds of philosophizing and intellectualizing, are

actually quite serious and intellectual themselves. They read almost like

straightforward philosophical treatises. Like the Inner Chapters, they do use

characters to convey their message, but the characters merely act as mouthpieces

for various philosophical arguments. Confucius states a point and Old Dan rebuts

it.

While both sets of stories advance similar arguments, what these later

stories miss is the style of the Inner Chapters. They seem to almost do away with

style altogether—the arguments receive the most emphasis. In the Inner

Chapters one finds something different: there, the way the stories advance their

argument is just as noteworthy as the argument itself. There, the author actually

tells stories: characters do something more than merely contribute pieces of an

argument. Further, the images and characters in these stories actually embody

the Dao. The very images of the story say just as much as the lines of commentary
 20

which come afterward to explain. These earlier chapters seem to argue in both

their content and their form —their style—tha

itself as a style.

Consider the story of Wang Tai told above: the teacher says

“When he stands up he doesn’t teach, when he sits down he doesn’t talk things

over, yet [his students] go to him empty and come away full.” (Graham 76) As

Confucius goes on to describe, it is his very lack of teaching and proselytizing—

which one could liken to a sty le —

that ultimately teaches: “Only the still ca

whatever is stilled” (77). He bears “a wordless teaching” (76). Uglyface Tuo is just

the same. Although he says nothing, his rmish style speaks. Thro
fo

use of these characters and images, through the emphasis on style over

philosophical argument, the stories from the Inner Chapters embody the very

lesson that they teach: that true De—virtue—is a style.

And here one could ask a further question: what style does the Dao take?

In what way is it embodied? Zhuangzi seems to give a straightforward answer to

this question: The Dao is embodied by the strange. In these early chapters, our

teachers are three men with “chopped feet,” a man “certainly... ugly enough to

frighten the whole world,” “Cripple Lipless,” “Pitcherneck with the big goitre”

(Palmer 42, Graham 80). In the chapter, “Worldly Business Among Men” we hear

of Cripple Shu: “his chin is buried down in his navel, his shoulders are higher

than his crown, the knobbly bone at the base of his neck points at the sky, the five
 21

pipes to the spine are right up on top, his two thighbones make another pair of

ribs”—and the author goes on to tell us the advantages of the useless.

This justification of the strange, far from being contained in isolated bits of

the Inner Chapters, is present throughout the whole of the collection. In fact, it

begins in the very first sentence of the work:

In the North Ocean there is a fish, its name is the Kun; the Kun’s

girth measures who knows how many thousand miles. It changes

into a bird, its name is the Peng; the Peng’s back measures who

knows how many thousand miles. When it puffs out its chest and

flies off, its wings are like clouds hanging from the sky...In the

words of the Tall Stories, ‘When Peng travels to the South Ocean,

the wake it thrashes on the water is three thousand miles long, it

mounts spiraling on the whirlwind ninety thousand miles high, and

is gone six months before it is out of breath.

A strange tale. In fact, as A.C. Graham notes, this story is lifted from a work that,

like Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, supposedly collects accounts of the

strange. And strangeness, the strangeness of the fish-bird, far from merely

providing an entertaining way to tell the story that follows, is in fact the very

subject of the story. To the flying creatures below—the earthly, common

creatures—which Graham has as “a cicada,” a “turtle-dove,” and a “quail,” the

journey to the South Ocean seems impossible, especially by the method of the

fish-bird. As they go on to detail, “We keep flying till we’re bursting, stop when
 22

we get to an elm or sandalwood, and sometimes are dragged back to the ground

before we’re there” and later, “That [to the to the top of an elm of sandalwood] is

the highest one can fly, where does he think he’s going?” (Graham 44-45).

Further, while they expend so much effort in their short-lived journeys, the fish-

bird expends no energy at all. It merely “rests it weight on the wind” (43),

What exactly is this story, traditionally held to be the first of the collection,

attempting to convey? It is that to small minds, the wise, the virtuous—the man

of the Dao— will always appear as the unusual, the strange, the impossible:

Little wits cannot keep up with the great, or few years with the

many. How would we know that this is so? The mushroom of the

morning does not know old and new moon, the cricket does not

know spring and autumn; their time is too short. South of Chu there

is the tree Ming-ling, which grows through a spring of five-hundred

years, declines through an autumn of five hundred years...it is only

nowadays that Pengzi in uniquely famous for living long, and is it

not sad that common men should think him insurpassable?

(Graham 44)

Ultimately, to Zhuangzi, then, when the Dao appears in the world, it most

often appears as the strange. This is, I think, for several reasons. Turning back to

the Confucius tales from the Inner Chapters, what exactly makes the characters

there strange? It is the difference between the shape of their body and the shape

of the usual body. In the third tale, upon seeing the man with the chopped foot,
 23

here named “Shu-shan Choptoes,” Confucius treats him as if he’s made some

mistake which led him to lose his foot. Confucius can’t give him advice—the

advice would come too late. However, Shu-shan points out Confucius’ error: what

in fact caused his body to be shaped as such was, apart from being some mistake,

his complete and total adherence to something beyond the body. He states, “I

simply did not have the sense to care [for the laws], and took my safety for

granted, that is how I lost my foot. Coming to you now, what gave the foot its

worth still survives in me, which is why I am concerned to keep it intact”

(Graham 78). Like the Daoist sage advertised by Old Dan, the man has

himself. And the body of a man who forgets himself in a world where people

remember themselves all too well, harkening, as Confucius does in this tale, to

the maintenance of physical health and external appearances, will necessarily

assume a strange shape.

In fact, even the behavior of such a man—a man who forgets himself and

his body— will, to usual minds, seem strange. While this pseudo-biographical

story comes from the Mixed Chapters, the latest chapters included in The Book o f

Zhuangzi, it illustrates the point beautifully: “When [Zhuangzi’s] wife died, Hui

Shi came to condole. As for [Zhuangzi], he was squatting with his knees out,

drumming on a pot and singing” (Graham 123). Hui Shi, a man associated with

the logical throughout the story collection, is struck by Zhuangzi’s behavior,

“When you have lived with someone... and brought up children, and grown old

together, to refuse to bewail her would be bad enough, but to drum on a pot and
 24

sing—could there be anything more shameful?” (123) To Hui Shi, a man

conditioned by the usual attitudes toward death and dying, all of this is highly

unusual. Making a point that comes across more clearly in Martin Palmer’s

translation, Zhuangzi explains:

When she first died, I certainly mourned just like everyone else!

However, I then thought back to her birth and to the very roots of

her being, before she was born. Indeed, not just before she was born

but before the time when her body was created. Not just before her

body was created but before the very origin of her life’s breath. Out

of all this, through the wonderful mystery of change she was given

her life’s breath. Her life’s breath wrought a transformation and she

had a body. Her body wrought a transformation and she was born.

Now there is yet another transformation and she is dead... She is

now at peace lying in her chamber, but if I were to sob and cry it

would certainly appear that I could not comprehend the ways of

destiny (Palmer 151).

While this passage, as Graham notes, is the production of a group of authors

writing much later, the message of this story, which, like the story of the fish-

bird, attempts to justify the strange, is rooted in the wisdom of the Daodejing. As

Max Kaltenmark notes, this idea of “returning” to the source is one of the

foundational statements of early Daoism (Kaltenmark 44). He quotes Chapter 16

of the Daodejing:
 25

These teeming creatures all return to their separate roots. Having

returned to its root, each is still; in stillness, each has returned to its

original state. Returning to one’s original state is the universal law.

To know the universal law is to be illumined; not to know it is to fret

in vain and bring down misfortune upon oneself.

But Zhuangzi adds something to this, illustrating the practical outcome of this

wisdom: to harken to the “universal law” is to appear strange to those who attach

significance to their bodies and their personal existence.

The story about Zhuangzi and his wife highlights an additional point: in

many cases, one’s ideas of the usual and the unusual, of the normal and the

strange, are the products of societal conditioning. While the value of the body is

reinforced by the biological conditioning of pleasure and pain, which enslaves us

to its preservation, our feelings toward death and dying are equally conditioned

by cultural custom which the Confucians believed should be followed as a law.

Hui Shi doesn’t seem to be surprised by Zhuangzi because of his own bodily

aversion to death. Rather, he seems surprised that Zhuangzi isn’t following

custom.

As the Daodejing says, in hearkening to the unchanging Dao, the sage

often disregards the changing definitions of the inappropriate and the

appropriate. As Arthur Waley has it in his translation The Way and its Power,

the sage resembles the “Uncarved Block.” Waley likens this to infancy: our

original state before we were conditioned, “carved” by the do’s and dont’s of our
 26

society. The Book o f Zhuangzi illustrates exactly what becoming an uncarved

block would look like: strange, completely out of accord with the behavior of

conditioned citizens. As it was suggested in the story of Shu-shan Choptoes, the

character’s complete adherence to the Dao caused him to act in such a way that

was seen as being so strange that it was labeled criminal. The Confucian society,

in mutilating him, merely gave explicit, physical form to a strangeness which his

actions already exemplified.

While the idea that the sage sometimes runs counter to the conditioning of

societal values is illustrated in the Book o f Zhuangzi through the characters

described above, their very ability to be used to convey these truths is itself an

enactment of this fact on behalf of its authors. As A.C. Graham notes in his

introduction, philosophical writers both before and after The Book

arguably even the author of the Daodejing—expound their ideas in

serious, efficient, logical treatises (26). The group of authors who composed The

Book o f Zhuangzi, however, broke from this tradition, proceeding, at their best,

in a way epitomized by the title of the first chapter, “Going Rambling Without a

Destination,” using stories with a wide variety of tones to convey their message

(Graham 43). Ultimately, the work’s disregard for literary tradition, a disregard

which allows it to employ the characters described above, is an embodiment of

the Daoist “uncarved block.”

I’d like to conclude my examination of The Book o f Zhuangzi with a final

point. The strange may mean “the shocking,” “the disturbing,” or “the weird”—
 27

meanings I’ve considered above—when strangeness causes some emotional

reaction in those who encounter it because of their social and biological

conditioning. The strange, I think, has another aspect: the simply left out. It

would seem that throughout TheBook o f Zhuangzi, the authors have

reverence for this last meaning, as the Dao itself is the most left out. It’s right

before our eyes, they seem to be telling us—and yet both society at large and we

as readers, pass it right by. Why?

A story about a gnarled and twisted tree appears throughout the Zhuangzi.

Hui Shih describes it in “Going Rambling Without a Destination”:

I have a great tree, people call it the tree of heaven. Its trunk is too

knobby and bumpy to measure with the inked line, its branches are

too curly and crooked to fit compasses or L-square. Stand it up in

the road and a carpenter wouldn’t even give it a glance (Graham 47)

This tree is likened to both Zhuangzi and the Way—the Dao he follows. Why do

we miss the Dao? Because it is itself strange, where strange, in this sense, means

“the useless.” In a life of self-seeking, we constantly apprehend the useful: that

from which we can benefit. As it is described in a later chapter:

Cinnamon has a taste,

So they hack it down

Laquer has a use,

So they strip it off.

 28

It continues, “[a]ll men know the uses of the useful, but no one knows the uses of

the useless” (75). In constantly seeking after the useful, we leave out the strange,

the useless. In so doing, we leave out 10,000 little details—but, what’s worse, we

leave out the Dao.

Zhuangzi concludes this story with a recommendation for readers: “Why

not plant [the tree] in the realm of Nothingwhatever...and go roaming away to do

nothing at is side, ramble around and fall asleep in its shade” (Graham 47).

Perhaps, in hearing of the strange—in having the strange called to our attention—

we can ourselves become strange, become useless. However, as Zhuangzi tells us,

“...it is plain that the useless does serve a use.” As Chapter 11 of the Daodejing

puts it, “Shape clay into a vessel;/ It is the space within that makes it useful”

(Feng). Space, the useless element of a vessel, allows it to capable of being filled.

The true Daoist, though useless, though strange, ultimately embodies the most

vital, the most living part of life. Free from the body, free from mind, free from

society, free from the desire for reputation one loses one’s self—but as Wallace

Stevens once described, one finds oneself again:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw

Or hear or felt came not but from myself

And there I found myself more truly and more strange (“Tea at the

Palaz of Hoon [italics my own])

One can, then, look at The Book ofZhuangzi as a long attempt to valorize

the strange. In its content and, most purely, in its form, it tells us that in order to
 29

truly live, one must by necessity become acquainted the strange in all its various

senses.

Becoming aware through the Book o f Zhuangzi that the strange is the

emissary of the Dao changes one’s approach to Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from

a Chinese Studio. Looking back to the three stories discussed above,

“Homunculus,” “An Otherworldly Examination,” and “The Daoist of Mount Lao,”

one can say, as we have said already, that the stories channel early Daoist works

like The Book o f Zhuangzi in what they say, in the lesson which lurks below their

surface. Now we may also say that the surface too, the particular way in which

these lessons unfold, namely, in their strangeness, is also a direct expression of

Daoist wisdom, perhaps even in its purest form. “Homunculus” is not a Daoist

story purely because, as Song Tao tells us, “virtue pursued with intent merits no

reward (Minford 7). Rather, “Homunculus” is Daoist because a tiny demon

emerges from a man’s ear. After reading the Book o f Zhuangzi, one finds Daoism

everywhere in these stories: in Song Tao’s dream, in the God of War, in Mr.

Zhang’s death, in a paper moon, in a fairy, in an all-too-real wall.

And here, I’d like to argue a further point: the very way in which the

stories bend the border between truth and fiction which was once, as Zeitlin

described, held to be a fault by some, is in fact a further embodiment of the

Daoist glorification of the strange. When this border is challenged—when we hear

that the events of “Homunculus” happened not too far away from the author’s

home, or that “An Otherwordly Examination” is based on a book Song Tao

 30

himself wrote, the stories themselves become strange objects in the reader’s

hands. Their very existence becomes just as deformed as Uglyface Tuo’s face. And

at this observation, one hears the voice of Zhuangzi intrude:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and

fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He

didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he

was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was

Zhuangzi who dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming

he was Zhuangzi (Watson 35).

Ultimately, then, these three stories are Daoist in their meaning-content, but they

are just as Daoist in their style. Feng Zhenluan, an early nineteenth century

commentator, also seems to have noticed this. For him, the stories’ style, far

more than their meaning, recalls the early Daoist works. As he advises readers,

This book should be read as one reads the Book o f Zhuangzi. The

Zhuangzi is wild and abstract, the strange tales are dense and

detailed. Although they treat of ghosts and foxes, the details make it

very concrete and real. It is a series of wild details and concrete

abstractions (Minford xxvii)

For Feng, the very ambiguity of the stories places them within the Daoist

tradition—he makes no mention of their “meaning.” As Zeitlin points out in her

own appraisal of Feng, “[he] concentrates on the stylistic techniques through

which the moral nuances are uncovered rather than on the moral nuances
 31

themselves” (Zeitlin 38). It seems relevant that the same commentator who

noticed the influence of Daoism upon the stories’ style also, only a few lines

before the above-quoted passage, said this: “If one reads Strange just for

the plot, and not for the style, one is a fool” (xxvii).

When one takes this view of the similarity between the Book ofZhuangzi

and Strange Tales one sees that Daoism is not merely contained in isolated

stories that argue for a Daoist moral. Rather, Daoism can be seen as a kind of

tone or style which pervades the work as whole. This perspective allows a reader

to see a more complete picture of what Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

actually is, as straightforwardly moralistic tales comprise a relatively small part of

the work. A large portion of the work contains tales that, while perhaps having a

more subtle message, seem to place more emphasis on the mere reporting of

strange tales. For example, consider the story “An Alligator’s Revenge” from

Minford’s translation. The story, one of the shortest in Minford’s selection, is

comprised of two paragraphs, the first of which merely describes alligators—

their appearance, their habitat, their feeding habits—as if the mere existence of

such a creature deserved to be to be included in a collection of strange tales. He

writes: “It is dragon-like in appearance, but shorter than a true dragon, and only

able to fly sideways. From time to time, it emerges from the river and scours the

banks for food—usually geese and ducks” (Minford 205). An even shorter

paragraph follows this first one, and, if there were some moral to be found in the
 32

story, one could expect it to be here—but one finds nothing, at least not obviously

so:

A traveler coming from the west of the river captured one and kept

it tied up with a rope in his boat. One day, he moored in the

Qiantang River when the rope worked its way loose and the

creature suddenly leaped into the water. The next instant, great

waves rose up and overturned the boat, which capsized and sank

into the river (205)

One might argue that the author is showing, perhaps even like the Daoists, that

our efforts to restrain and control our environment ultimately prove fruitless;

however, this kind of interpretation requires more from the reader than other

tales like “Homunculus” and “An Otherworldly Examination,” where the moral

seems obvious.

“A Passion for Snakes” also seems to fit in this category. The author

describes a man from his hometown who “had a passion for eating snakes”

(Minford 141). He goes on to describe his habits in detail:

If he came upon a very small one, he munched it up whole and

swallowed it like a spring onion. Larger ones he cut up into small

pieces and ate it with his hands, crunching them up loudly and

vigorously, and letting the blood dribble all over his chin” (Minford

141)
 33

The author goes on to report that the man could also smell snakes: he once

smelled one through a wall, and, finding it, bit it in the head and ate it while the

tail was still “wriggling from his mouth.” This story is incredibly shocking—it

seems as if Pu Songling ups the ante as every sentence passes, pushing readers

closer and closer to disgust; however, what is the moral of this story? Whatever it

may be, the story is clearly in a different camp than the moralistic stories

described above.

“The Devoted Mouse” provides a final example of stories from this

category. Here, two mice crawl into the room of Yang Tianyi, an acquaintance of

Pu Songling. One is swallowed by a snake. When the snake returns to his hole

fattened from his catch, the second mouse bites the snake, and the snake chases it

in pursuit. After failing to catch the mouse, it returns to its hole, and the same

events unfold again: the mouse bites and eludes capture. This continues, as Yang

reported “for quite some time” before the snake vomits up his prey (Minford

180). Upon seeing the body of his dead “friend,” the mouse cries, before pulling

the corpse away. While one could say that the story shows that animals have

strikingly human emotions in some cases, this, far from being a moral—a moral

like “virtue pursued with intent merits no reward”—is more of an observation, as

if Pu Songling were providing readers with additional data through which they

might make a more accurate appraisal.

After reading tales like “An Alligator’s Revenge” or “The Devoted Mouse”

one might question their designation as “strange”—how could stories like these
 34

be arranged in a collection with tales of fox-spirits, demons, dream worlds,

magical acts, transformations and the like? “A Passion for Snakes” might fit into

the collection, being so extreme in the disgust it provokes. However, “An

Alligator’s Revenge” and “The Devoted Mouse” are more subtle. If these stories

do indeed embody the strange, they do so in a sense quite different from a

majority of the stories in the collection.

Why, for example, does a story like “An Earthquake” mentioned above, in

which the author merely describes an earthquake that he experienced in his

youth, belong in the same collection as a story like “Grace and Pine?”—a long

story which, as Minford notes, contained an obvious message to almost every

commentator: “Spiritual communion between a man and a close woman friend of

this kind is something superior to the carnal love of man and wife” (Minford 511).

The answer lies in the very Daoist conception of the strange which runs

throughout the work.

My reading of the Book ofZhuangzi reveals its several justifications of the

strange. In employing the shocking, the things that provoke a reaction, Zhuangzi

called to our attention our discriminating, conditioned mind, which only sees

through the eyes of its body and its current historical moment. However, in our

final examination, Zhuangzi seems to point out something more subtle: the

useless: things so strange that they don’t even provoke a reaction. We simply miss

them. We leave them out. In bringing these things to our attention, Zhuangzi

reveals something further about our minds: in our self-seeking efforts, we leave
 35

out countless details that aren’t pertinent to our search. We miss the Dao, which

can’t be used for our selfish ends.

Ultimately, while Pu Songling follows Zhuangzi in justifying and bringing

to our attention the strange in its many different forms, I’d like to argue that

Strange Tales follows Zhuangzi into this more subtle territory, and it is for this

reason that tales like “An Earthquake” or “An Alligator’s Revenge” are collected

together with tales like “Grace and Pine” or “An Otherworldly Examination.”

Here, some lines from the author’s own preface to Strange Tales seem pertinent:

Here in the civilized world,

Stranger events by far occur

Than in the Country of Cropped Hair

Before our very eyes

Weirder tales unfold

Than in the Nation of Flying Heads (Minford 455)

As John Minford notes in his commentary to the lines, the “Country of the

Cropped Hair” referred to a real place: the south of China where the “men had

tattooed bodies and short-cropped hair.” This name is taken from another, earlier

work, the Book o f Hills and Seas. “[T]he Nation of Flying Heads,” however, refers

to a place decidedly fictional. The Minford description deserves being quoted in

full:

A fabulous community, so called because heads were in the habit of

leaving their bodies and flying down to marshy places to feed on

 36

worms and crabs. A red ring was seen the night before the flight,

encircling the neck of the man whose head was about to fly; with

the appearance of daylight, his head returned. Some say that the

ears were used as wings; others that the hands also left the body

and flew away (Minford 463)

With these facts in mind, the lines reveal hidden depths. In the first three lines,

the author’s intent seems clear: after receiving the accounts from friends—

mentioned in lines quoted above— Pu Songling has discovered that strange

events have been unfolding in his vicinity, unbeknownst to him. “Strange,” here,

seems to imply the supernatural, as if Pu Songling were saying ghosts

spirits exist in our own towns. The next three lines, though, appear to be doing

something different. Where the first three juxtaposed one real place with another

real place, these lines compare that which lies “before our eyes” with a

supernatural space. What do these lines seem to be saying? That the seemingly

unremarkable things we miss, are perhaps more remarkable than the fantastic,

the supernatural. Look! He seems to be saying—the strange, the weird, the

wonderful, are not far off.

Sidney Sondergard, in her full translation of Pu Songling’s collection,

includes this tale, “The Clam”:

In the East China Sea there lives a particular type of clam and when it

becomes hungry it swims close to the shore, where its two shells open up;

from inside, a small crab emerges, connected to the clam via a thin red
 37

tube, and it hunts for food until it's sated, then returns to the clam shell,

which precedes to shut. If someone secretly severs the tube, both creatures

die.”

The Historian of the Strange, then, has a further mission in Strange Tales

from a Chinese studio. Like Zhuangzi before him, Pu Songling, far from alerting

us to the existence of supernatural beings within our very midst, attempts to

show us that, in some way, this very moment, wherever you are, whatever you are

doing, contains something hidden, something unexpected. As Judith Zeitlin puts

it, “The point is that the strange is not other; the strange resides in our midst”

(Zeitlin 47) Wonder at our strange, unusual, varied life, then is Pu Songling’s

goal, wonder which takes us away from our small, conditioned self, sifting the

world for its own uses, wonder which the Daoists once called De, virtue. While in

wonder we lose a part of ourselves, if Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is to

be believed, we’ll find it once again, as Wallace Stevens once had it, “more truly

and more strange.”

 38

Works Cited

Graham, A. C. Yin-Yang and theNature o f Correlative Thinking. Quirin Press,

Kaltenmark, Max. Lao Tzu and Taoism. Stanford University Press, 1969.

Laozi. Tao Te Ching. Translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, Vintage Books, 2012.

Mollgaard, Eske. An Introduction to Daoist Thought: Action, Language, and Ethics in

Zhuangzi. Routledge, 2007.

Pu, Songling, and John Minford. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Penguin, 2006.

Pu, Songling, and Sidney L. Sondergard. Strange Tales from Liaozhai. Vol. 5, Jain Publ.,

2012 .

Zeitlin, Judith T. Historian o f the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale.

Stanford Univ. Press, 1997.

Zhuangzi, and A. C. Graham. Chuang TzuU: The Inner Chapters. Hackett Pub. Co.,

2001 .

Zhuangzi. The Book o f Chuang Tzu. Translated by Martin Palmer, Penguin Books, 1996.

Zhuangzi. The Complete Works o f Chuang Tzu. Translated by Burton Watson, Columbia

University Press, 2002.