The Three Tricks Every Ghost Has: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 鬼有三技过此鬼道乃穷
A self-styled "Mr. Open-Hearted" met a hanged ghost on a country road. He named her three tricks one by one and then sang her a parody mantra so cheerful it set her free.
Classical Chinese tales — strange, forgotten, alive again in English.
Cathay Tales is an independent editorial project translating short fiction from late imperial China — fox spirits and rural ghosts, forensic case files from the 13th century, mythic wars between gods, gothic horror from a Qing libertine, and a fantasy voyage to thirty impossible kingdoms.
Six parallel series. One project. All from the public domain. All annotated so a reader who has never opened a Chinese book can still feel the story land.
Browse by theme
Six themed hubs gather tales across centuries — pick one to follow a single thread of Chinese folklore.
Foxes
2 tales
Chinese Fox Spirits & Shapeshifters
In Chinese folklore, the fox is the most famous shapeshifter — sometimes a seductress, sometimes a faithful wife, sometimes a Daoist apprentice on the road to immortality. These translated tales collect fox stories across centuries, from the cunning trickster of the Tang to the loyal fox widow of the Qing.
Love & Death
3 tales
Chinese Tales of Love Across Death
No love story in classical China ends at the grave. Lovers return as ghosts to keep promises. Husbands and wives meet again across realms. The lines between the living and the dead were never the border Western readers might expect.
Karma
3 tales
Chinese Tales of Karma & Retribution
In Chinese folk Buddhism, karma is not metaphor — it is a debt with interest. These tales trace what happens when the debt comes due across lifetimes: animals that remember past insults, neighbors who recognize old enemies, and the strange patience of moral arithmetic.
Afterlife
3 tales
Chinese Tales of the Afterlife & Underworld
The Chinese underworld is not a place of pure punishment — it is a bureaucracy. Courts, ledgers, registers, magistrates. Souls queue. Officials file paperwork. These tales follow what happens when the world below behaves exactly like the world above.
Hauntings
6 tales
Chinese Hauntings & Ghost Encounters
Not every Chinese ghost wants revenge. Some just want a candle, a chat, or to be left alone. These translated tales collect the country's long catalogue of strange encounters — and the scholars, monks, and ordinary householders who learned to live next door to the dead.
Tao
5 tales
Chinese Tales of Taoist Marvels
Long before xianxia, classical China was full of Taoist marvels — apprentices who learned to walk through walls, hermits who flew swords across mountains, alchemists who paid for immortality in years of their own lives. These tales translate the originals.
Tales
The Jade Guanyin Who Chose to Die: A Southern Song Ghost Story / 崔待诏生死冤家
A skilled carver and an embroideress who loved him were torn apart by a powerful lord. She died. She kept coming back. And she wouldn't leave him alone.
The Fisherman Who Drank with a Drowning Ghost: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 王六郎
Every night a fisherman in Shandong poured a cup of wine for the river's drowning ghosts. One night, one of them came up to drink with him — and stayed.
The Red Umbrella That Made Old Bones Speak: A 13th-Century Forensic Technique / 红伞验骨：宋慈让陈年白骨开口的光学法医术
A magistrate exhumes a year-old skeleton, washes it, steams it over hot earth, then holds a red oilpaper umbrella over it in full sunlight. The bruises and fractures the killer thought were lost forever bloom across the bone in a faint, smoky red. The same optical trick is used by modern forensic labs.
The Couple Who Became Mandarin Ducks: A Warring States Love Tragedy / 韩凭夫妇
A king stole another man's wife. The husband killed himself. The wife jumped from a tower. The king ordered them buried in separate graves — so they would never touch again. Within ten days, two trees grew up out of the mounds and tied themselves together.
The Country Where Everyone Wore a Mask Over the Back of Their Head: A Qing Dynasty Satire / 两面国：人人在后脑勺戴了张面具
Tang Ao and Lin Zhiyang walk into a coastal kingdom where every citizen wears a hood that covers the back of his head. The faces in front are warm, attentive, deferential. When Lin Zhiyang lifts a hood from behind, he finds a second face — fanged, snake-eyed, and grinning. The first face only smiles at people in silk. The second face is what's waiting for everyone else.
The Pillow That Dreamed a Lifetime in a Bowl of Millet: A Tang Dynasty Tale of Borrowed Glory / 枕中记
A penniless scholar gripes to an old Daoist in a roadside inn about his wretched life. The Daoist lends him a porcelain pillow. The innkeeper is still cooking the millet when the scholar wakes up — fifty years later.
The Disciple Who Wanted to Walk Through Walls: A Qing Dynasty Tale of Daoist Magic / 劳山道士
A spoiled young scholar climbs Mount Lao to learn Daoist magic. The master gives him an axe and tells him to gather firewood. Two months later, he begs for one party trick — and goes home thinking he can walk through walls.
The Magistrate Who Climbed Down a Well into Hell: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 酆都知县
Every year the people of a Sichuan county threw three thousand pieces of silver paper down a well, to pay the dead. When the new magistrate forbade it, the elders said: then go down the well and tell them yourself.
The Girl Who Volunteered to Feed the Mountain Serpent: A Jin Dynasty Ghost Story / 李寄斩蛇
Nine girls had already been fed to the serpent in the mountain. In the tenth year, a thirteen-year-old named Li Ji walked up to the cave with a sword, a dog, and a plan.
The Two-Hundred-Year-Old Fox Who Refused to Seduce: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 古墓狐女
A young man tracked a fox spirit to an old grave, hoping for a tryst. The fox — two hundred years old, sworn never to seduce a human — told him exactly what fox sex actually does to a man.
The Scholar Who Died to Take the Exam: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 考城隍
A scholar lies dying — and a messenger arrives on a white horse to escort him to an examination hall. The examiners are ghosts. The test question: one line about intention.
The Silver Needle That Turned Black: A 13th-Century Chinese Poison Test / 银钗验毒：宋慈的砒霜检测术
In 1247, a Chinese coroner wrote down how to catch a poisoner with a silver hairpin. The chemistry he didn't know he was doing wouldn't be explained in the West for another six hundred years.
The Courtesan Who Drowned a Fortune to Punish a Coward: A Ming Dynasty Tragedy / 杜十娘怒沉百宝箱
A celebrated Beijing courtesan saved her own ransom in secret. When her lover sold her to a salt merchant for a thousand taels, she opened the box she had carried south — and threw a fortune into the Yangtze, one drawer at a time.
The Country Where Politeness Killed Business: A Qing Dynasty Satire / 君子国：太讲礼貌反而做不成买卖
On the way home from a failed civil-service career, the Tang scholar Tang Ao steps ashore in a place where every buyer insists on paying more than the asking price, and no merchant will accept it. The market grinds to a halt — but it is not a parable about generosity. It is the most savage piece of satire in nineteenth-century Chinese fiction, and the joke is on you.
The Ghost Who Forgot to Vanish: A Qing Dynasty Murder Mystery / 唐执玉断狱
A bleeding ghost knelt at the high commissioner's steps and named its murderer. The verdict was overturned. Then one old clerk asked: how exactly did the ghost leave?
The Friend Who Forgot How to Leave: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 南昌士人
Two young scholars studying in a quiet temple. Then one dies, and the other doesn't know — until midnight, when the door creaks open and his friend walks back in.
The Curly-Bearded Stranger: A Tang Dynasty Folktale of Three Heroes / 虬髯客传
A penniless strategist, a runaway concubine with a red whisk, and a wild man with a curly red beard who carries a severed head in his bag. The night the three of them meet, the future of the Tang dynasty quietly changes hands.
The Scholar Who Wiped a Ghost's Mouth with Toilet Paper: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 许南金不畏鬼
Two giant glowing eyes appeared in the wall while he was studying. His friend nearly died of fright. He just said: 'Great, I needed light to read.'
The Ghost Who Resigned Twice: A Ming Dynasty Ghost Story / 鬼隐
A Ming dynasty magistrate quit office because the infighting sickened him. Then he died, refused reincarnation, became an underworld official — and quit again.
A Pig That Hated Only One Man: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 老翁与猪
A village pig charged to bite one elderly neighbor on sight — and ignored everyone else. Then the old man figured out why.
The Fox Widow Who Raised Her In-Laws: A Qing Dynasty Ghost Story / 狐妻守墓
A famine drove an old couple north to look for their missing son. They never found him. What they found instead was his widow — waiting at his grave for six years, and not quite human.
About this project
Most of these books exist in English only as scholarly translations — out of print, behind paywalls, or written for graduate seminars. Meanwhile, English-language readers have an enormous appetite for Chinese ghost stories, wuxia, xianxia, donghua, and folk-horror — but very little of the original source material is easy to find.
Cathay Tales is a small attempt to close that gap. One annotated tale at a time, drawn from six parallel series:
- Notes from the Thatched Study — Yuewei Caotang Biji 阅微草堂笔记 (Ji Yun, c. 1798). A Qing scholar's notebook of foxes, ghosts, and karmic puzzles.
- Investiture of the Gods — Fengshen Yanyi 封神演义 (Xu Zhonglin, c. 1605). The mythic war that toppled the Shang dynasty, fought by gods, immortals, and mortals with magic weapons.
- The Coroner's Notebook — Xiyuan Jilu 洗冤集录 (Song Ci, 1247). The world's first systematic forensic manual, told as 13th-century true crime.
- What the Master Would Not Discuss — Zibuyu 子不语 (Yuan Mei, c. 1788). Gothic horror, gender-bending hauntings, and forbidden tales from a Qing libertine.
- Flowers in the Mirror — Jinghua Yuan 镜花缘 (Li Ruzhen, 1827). A Chinese Gulliver's Travels — thirty impossible kingdoms visited by sea, including a Country of Women that ruled men in 1827.
- Quelling the Demons' Revolt — Sansui Pingyao Zhuan 三遂平妖传 (Luo Guanzhong, Ming). Dark fantasy: rebel sorcerers, talismanic magic, and a holy woman who summons soldiers from beans.
Source texts are in the public domain. Our translations and annotations are released under CC BY-NC 4.0.
Story first, scholarship second. We write the way a friend telling you a strange story would — not the way a journal article would.
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Several annotated tales per week — fox spirits, forensic case files, demon hunts — free, by email.
Or support the translations directly — every cup of tea funds the next tale.
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