About the book


Painted Skin is a short story from the book Liao Zhai Zhi Yi by Pu Songling.

Liao = Chat / Socialize / Talk
Zhai = Building / House / Pavilion / Residence / Cottage
Zhi = Record / Journal / Log / Book
Yi = Weird / Strange / Unnatural

Pu was a publisher of books. His workshop is called Liao Zhai. So named, because he likes to invite ppl, even strangers, to his place for chatting and story telling. Over his life, he collected ~500 folk tales on supernaturals. He compiled a book of 12 volumes and named it Liao Zhai Zhi Yi. The shop also published many other works like Liao Zhai's Literary Collection, today Liao Zhai became synonomous with Liao Zhai Zhi Yi.

Despite the folk lores he collected have always been told in everyday spoken language, Liao Zhai Zhi Yi is written in classical Chinese. Most Chinese today would not be able to read the work. The work is also very concise with very little detail. The full text of the original Painted Skin can fit on two pages.

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A fair translation of Liao Zhai Zhi Yi is "Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio" in which he refers to himself in his travels collecting these tales as the "Historian Of The Strange"

Pu SongLing's classic work was also inspiration and/or direct source on a variety of movies from the Chinese Ghost Story trilogy (though Ning marries her and has a son by the lovely ghost in the original), Mr. Vampire and many others going back to 1954'2 Beyond The Grave. Including, of course, King Hu's version of Painted Skin from 15 years ago.

As mentioned above, the writing is very concise and direct, making it seem almost more like an outline that a finished work to many western readers. But it is a fascinating compendium of Chinese folklore, well worth perusing to those who have the opportunity to do so.

An English translation of the original The Painted Skin short story is online here:
http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/cinema/archives/short_stories_the_painted_skin.php

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