Five Editorial Principles for This Collection

First: Each story in this collection has a title. Titles of stories from earlier times were so well written that Yuan dynasty dramatists adopted them as titles for their plays. Half the titles that appear in A Formulary for the Correct Sounds for an Era of Great Harmony read like phrases out of short stories.1 There have been recent attempts to pair two entirely different stories and give each a one-line title, thus presenting the two titles as a couplet.2 As a consequence, preexisting titles were altered and reduced from precious gold to humble iron. This is why I have instead opted for one couplet for each title, in the tradition of Outlaws of the Marsh and The Journey to the West.3

Second: In compiling the stories, I try not to offend decency and good taste. The resulting collection is not entirely free of stories about sins of the flesh, but the selection is limited to actual events only, and the restrained and subtle language provides nothing more than hints to the reader. There is absolutely nothing filthy that would offend decency and corrupt morals. It is only right for a writer to maintain refinement in literature. This is not the sanctimonious posturing of a pedantic moralist.

Third: The poems in these stories serve as what I call “seasonings,” and most of them are written by me for the purpose of this collection. Any preexisting material that appears on these pages is adopted because it fits the plot to perfection, and such adoptions are not acts of plagiarism but constitute an established practice among story writers.

Fourth: Most of the stories are about everyday life rather than ghosts and fantasies. As they say, it is harder to draw dogs and horses than ghosts and demons, but I chose not to exclude stories of the latter kind just because they are easier to write and not amenable to proof. If the few that concern deities, ghosts, and the netherworld are found to be close to life, they should be given credit for differing from those that are nothing but pure figments of the imagination.

Fifth: These being cautionary tales, words of admonishment are given multiple times in each. Rather than mark them out, I leave them to the discerning eye of the reader.

Master of the Studio of the Void

The cyclical year of wuchen [1628] of the Chongzhen reign period [1628–44]