TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY
GEORGE SOULIÉ
OF THE FRENCH CONSULAR SERVICE IN CHINA
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1913
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY,
ENGLAND.
[v]
The first European students who undertookto give the Western world anidea of Chinese literature were misled bythe outward and profound respect affectedby the Chinese towards their ancientclassics. They have worked from generationto generation in order to translatemore and more accurately the thirteenclassics, Confucius, Mengtsz, and the others.They did not notice that, once out ofschool, the Chinese did not pay more attentionto their classics than we do to ours: ifyou see a book in their hands, it will neverbe the "Great Study" or the "Analects,"but much more likely a novel like the"History of the Three Kingdoms," or aselection of ghost-stories. These works that[vi]everybody, young or old, reads and readsagain, have on the Chinese mind an influencemuch greater than the whole bulkof the classics. Notwithstanding their greatimportance for those who study Chinesethought, they have been completely leftaside. In fact, the whole of real Chineseliterature is still unknown to the Westerners.
It is a pity that it should be so. Thenovels and stories throw an extraordinarylight on Chinese everyday life that foreignershave been very seldom, and now willnever be, able to witness, and they illustratein a striking way the idea theChinese have formed of the other world.One is able at last to understand what isthe meaning of the huen or superior soul,which leaves the body after death or duringsleep, but keeps its outward appearance andordinary clothes; the p'aï or inferior soulwhich remains in the decaying body, andsometimes is strong enough to prevent itfrom decaying, and to give it all the appearances[vii]of life. The magicians of the Taoreligion, or Taoist priests, play a greatpart in these stories, and the Buddhistideas of metempsychosis give the opportunityof more complicated situations than wedream of.
Among the most celebrated works, Ihave chosen the "Strange Stories fromthe Lodge of Leisures," Leao chai Chi yi.It was written in the second half of theeighteenth century by P'ou Song-lin (P'ouLieou-hsien), of Tsy-cheou, in the Chantongprovince.
The whole work is composed of morethan three hundred stories. I have selectedtwenty-five among the most characteristic.
This being a literary work, and havingnothing scientific to boast of, I have triedto give my English readers the sameliterary impression that the Chinese has.Tradutore traditore, say the Italians; I hopeI have not been too much of a traitor.
A translation is always a most difficult[viii]work; if it is materially exact, word forword and sentence by sentence, the so-calledscientific men are satisfied, but allthe charm, beauty, and interest of theoriginal are lost. Very often, too, suchtranslation is obscure and unintelligible.Each nation has an heirloom of traditions,customs, or religion to which its literatureconstantly refers. If the reader isnot acquainted with that literature, thesereferences will convey no meaning to hismind, or they may even convey a false one.In Chinese, this difficulty is greater thanin any other language; the Far Easterncivilisation has had a developme