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.
Scholar Huo and Scholar Yan of Wendeng County, Shandong Province, were playmates in their childhood and often teased each other even after they grew up, trying hard to get the upper hand in those exchanges.
Yang Yuwei had moved to a house by the bank of the Sishui River. His study faced an open wilderness. Outside the wall were many ancient tombs. At night, winds blew through white poplar trees, setting them to roaring like sea waves.
A scholar named Li Boyan, from Xishui, Shandong, was a straightforward, upright and brave man. Suddenly he collapsed with some kind of acute illness.
Chen Baoyue, a native of Fujian Province, was the chief executive of Qinzhou dao (Trans. Note: Dao in ancient China was an administrative division under the province).
“Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: Qiao Niang” is a story weaving supernatural fantasy (fox spirits and ghosts), entangled passions, and human redemption. Pu Songling delicately portrays the emotional collisions between humans and the otherworldly (foxes and ghosts).
There was a man surnamed Zhang in Henan Province whose ancestors were from Shandong. During the latter part of the Ming Dynasty, when Shandong was in wide-spread turmoil, his wife was captured and taken away by Manchu soldiers. After that, as Zhang often used to travel to Henan, he decided to settle down there.