Whose Strange Stories? P'u Sung-ling (1640 - East Asian History

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iv Cover calligraphy Yan Zhenqing M.cJn, Tang calligrapher and statesman Cover illustration Talisman-"Passport for wandering souls on the way to Hades," from Henri Dore, Researches into Chinese superstitions (Shanghai: T'usewei Printing Press, 1914-38)
WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? P'U SUNG-LING $tl (1640-1715), HERBERT GILES (1845-1935), AND THE LIAO-CHAI CHIH-I IWPiWttJ1 John Minford and Tong Man X For many decades Herbert Giles' nineteenth-century Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liao-chai chih-i) have been at best quietly tolerated, more often derided, and dismissed as orientalist bowdlerisations of P'u Sung-ling.! But people have kept on reading them, publishers have kept on reprinting them, and nobody has yet come up with anything better-in English at least. It is perhaps a good moment to take a look at Giles' life2 and times,3 and at what exactly it was that he did to these Chinese texts. This might also offer a new prism through which to view P'u Sung-ling himself, surely the outstanding example of a "great" Chinese author poorly served by his own 1 In the post-Waley era it became common to refer to "old Giles" in a patronising and dismissive way, to mock at his vague Chuang Tzu and his prudish Strange Stories; to complain that his Dictionary was too heavy (i.e. useless), and full of mistakes, that his Biographical Dictionary was, in the words of Joseph Needham, full of "superficial and apocryphal anecdotes," and that it had, in the words of David Pollard, been "made obsolete by modern historical research." It was customary to assume that he was an "amateur," and had been in every way bettered and replaced by the more recent generations of professional sinologists. And yet it was Joseph Needham who on a later occasion praised Giles for being /"probably the first to make a radical distinction between the 'south-pointing carriage' and the magnetic compass proper ... 2 The publication of Giles' own Memoirs in East Asian History 13/14 (1997), recently edited by Charles Aylmer from the typescript in the Cambridge University Library, offers faScinating insights, but the sort of information it pro- lOVER Figure 1 Embossed cover of the fIrst edition of Giles' Strange Stories, designed for Gites by his friend, Warren de ta Rue 1
Page 1 and 2: East Asian History NUMBERS 17/18·
Page 3: CONTENTS 1 Whose Strange Stories? P
Page 7 and 8: Figure 4 WHOSE STRANGE STORIES' "Ch
Page 9 and 10: WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? native criti
Page 11 and 12: with potent talismans against a var
Page 13 and 14: of more human differences: the abse
Page 15 and 16: WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? translator,
Page 17 and 18: WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? Philostratus
Page 19 and 20: WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? 15 Robert Bu
Page 21 and 22: .. fea; lit + !-t 7" o 1f.fi:
Page 23 and 24: WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? Giles's rend
Page 25 and 26: Stone Ink Chamber E JlHI-seal carve
Page 27 and 28: Tree Shadow Brushes the Window wm i
Page 29 and 30: Snow Studio .-seal carved by Ho Che
Page 31 and 32: Charm for dispelling sadness and an
Page 33 and 34: " .... 14f)T; \r/ ' . . or· ': ( "
Page 35 and 36: Enquiring of my Heart's Desire § F
Page 37 and 38: Passport for wandering souls on the
Page 39 and 40: Charm curing from an extraordinary
Page 41 and 42: One Smile and All Cares Are Forgott
Page 43 and 44: Play Vff.JIJ.-seal carved by Kao Fe
Page 45 and 46: Studying Should Root Itself in Tran
Page 47 and 48: Entrusting Emotion to the East-Flow
Page 49 and 50: Hall of Swallow's Wmgs .1i!: -seal
Page 51 and 52: WHOSE STRANGE STORIES? long grass 1

Whose Strange Stories? P'u Sung-ling (1640 - East Asian History

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