Strange Tales from Liaozhai’s “The Cloth Merchant”(or “The Cloth Dealer”) tells a peculiar yet touching story about a cloth merchant and a ghost.
A man from Changqing County, Shandong, lived by selling cloth. While he was in Taian, Jiangsu, he heard there was a very good fortune teller, so he asked the man to forecast his future. The fortune teller told him:”You’re in trouble. Hurry home.”
My friend Bi Yi’an is a free, easy-going, optimistic and straightforward man. He is also fat and has a thick beard. He is well-known among men of letters. When his uncle, Bi Jiyou, served as a prefect, he often visited him at his villa.
When a farmer was weeding the fields, his wife took lunch to him in a pottery jug. After he finished eating, he put the jug in the field. In the evening, he found the left-over porridge in the jug was gone. Such strange things happened several times and the farmer grew suspicious. He kept…
Wang Wen, a scholar from Dong Chang, was young and honest. Once he visited a region under the rule of the State of Chu as a tourist. After he crossed the river and checked into a hotel, he went out for a stroll.