Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio or Liaozhai Zhiyi (also Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio or Strange Tales of Liaozhai) (simplified Chinese: 聊斋志异; traditional Chinese: 聊齋誌異; pinyin: Liáozhāi zhìyì; Wade–Giles: Liao²chai¹ chi⁴yi⁴) is a collection of nearly 500 mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling in Classical Chinese during the early Qing dynasty.
The stories differ broadly in length, with the shortest under a page long. Many are classified as Chuanqi, or Zhiguai, sometimes translated as "marvel tales", that is, stories written in classical Chinese starting in the Tang dynasty. Pu borrows from a tradition of oral storytelling where the boundary between reality and the odd or fantastic is blurred. The stories are filled with magical foxes, ghosts, scholars, jiangshi, court officials, Taoist exorcists and beasts.
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