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“Huaguzi” in Strange Tales from Liaozhai recounts a love story between a human and a supernatural being (a woman transformed from a musk deer spirit), filled with fantastical elements and profound moral symbolism.
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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.
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“The Willow Scholar” is a symbolic short story from Strange Tales from Liaozhai. Blending myth, fable, and social concern, it explores the relationship between humans, nature, and spirits through the resolution of a locust plague.
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Strange Tales from Liaozhai (a Chinese Studio): A Xia narrates the tragic romance between scholar Jing and the beautiful A Xia (not a human being).
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Strange Tales from Liaozhai (a Chinese Studio): Gong Mengbi explores enduring friendship, gratitude, and karmic justice through the bond between wealthy Liu Fanghua of Baoding, Hebei, and his steadfast friend Gong Mengbi from Shaanxi.
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The story Forty Thousand Coins from Strange Tales from Liaozhai by Pu Song ling serves as a karmic allegory, illustrating the Buddhist-Confucian principle that debts — whether material or moral — must inevitably be repaid.
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In the household of Minister Wang of Xincheng, his chief steward — wealthy though untitled — dreamed suddenly of a man charging into his room, declaring: “You owe forty thousand coins. Repay it now!”