Yun Ji (1724–1805)

A really fascinating book, as a book of stories and as a historical look at how the supernatural was seen to intersect the natural at one point in time. There seems to be not much about the book in English academic works, except that it exists, so my understanding is from just the introduction to this translation, but the guy was a high level bureaucrat and a lot of the stories are specifically attributed to his friends' experiences or sometimes his own personal experience.

For example, there's one story titled "checkpoints" in this collection (the titles have been added by the translators for ease of reference) about how he was assigned to a frontier province and suddenly asked to produce passports for dead spirits so they can travel with their bodies back to their hometowns. Initially he refuses because obviously spirits don't need passports but after a few weeks he can detect a strangeness in the city that he attributes to the spirits being stuck and so he produces passports backdated and the spirits clear. He asks a friend who says maybe it originally started as a scam by a local official but now the belief is so engrained the spirits genuinely can't move without the paper. And ends on a note marvelling at how paper defines our reality.

Not all the stories are particularly noteworthy but all reflect something interesting and give a view of the supernatural that's totally different to English folklore, say. The way that he often ties a rational explanation within a Taoist/Confucian/Buddhist framework into the story is fascinating. And the assumption that supernatural things just happen and should be prepared for and worked around as shown through common sense advice... It's really interesting.

Of course it's hard to know how much of the stories are intentional fiction and how much genuinely reflect what he believed happened. He affects a sceptical air in a lot of stories but is also seemingly easily convinced. it might also be due to the specific selection of stories from, apparently, thousands - of course the more prosaic stories where he totally dismisses the supernatural wouldn't make it in. Still, even read as intentional fiction there's a lot of good stories. And it's funny when the stories buck expectations - there's one which is set up exactly like a classic locked room mystery with a detective who comes and lists all the things like exploring motive, means, the nature of the crime, suspects, how it happened etc. And then at the end he just goes "this is impossible so it's supernatural crime. Case closed"

The book also has some good story notes and a decent introduction. Recommended if you like weird tales in general, especially if you enjoy strange tales from a Chinese studio… (mehr)