Author of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, master of ghosts and spirits
A Qing-dynasty writer who failed the imperial exams his whole life and lived in poverty, yet wrote the summit of the classical-language short story, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Across nearly five hundred tales, fox spirits, flower fairies, and ghosts take the stage — and often prove more loving and more honorable than people. Through these tales of fairies and foxes he wrote both the most beautiful love and the most biting satire of a corrupt examination system and a wicked world — "writing ghosts and spirits, he surpasses others; pricking greed and cruelty, he cuts to the bone."
The most moving figures in the Strange Tales are often not people, but fox-women and ghosts full of love and honor. Pu Songling lets spirits understand love and gratitude better than the living, and thereby throws into relief the coldness and hypocrisy of the human world. Failing the exams all his life, he poured all his indignation into these tales of the netherworld.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.