In a certain village there was a young woman who had been born with a cleft lip, and for that reason had grown to adulthood without ever being given a name. She was gentle in temperament and dutiful to her parents, taking on her mother’s burdens without complaint and never fearing hardship.
One day she was carrying food to her father in the fields when she met an old woman on the road. The old woman looked at her and said, “What a lovely girl you are, with such well-formed features. It is only this cleft lip that hides your beauty.” The girl replied, “I was born this way. What can I do about it?” The old woman said, “I can cure it for you. Would you like that?” The girl bowed and thanked her, begging to be healed. The old woman took a steamed bun from the girl’s basket, peeled off a thin strip of skin, dabbed it with a little spit, and pasted it over the split in her lip. Then she instructed her not to smile. In three days, she said, it would be whole. Overjoyed, the girl bowed again in thanks, but the old woman’s figure had already gone vague and indistinct. The girl was astonished and thought she must have met an immortal. She carefully obeyed the instruction, and three days later her lip had indeed grown together. The mended place was pale in color, just as if powder had been dusted there.
Note: Zuicha Zhiguai, by Li Qingchen.
The Chinese short tale passed from the Former Qin through the Wei and Jin, the Tang and Song, and the Ming and Qing, continually taking on new meanings and new forms. The earliest sense of xiaoshuo as “brief jottings” survived across that long history through notebook fiction devoted to odd anecdotes, variant accounts, and scattered talk. The body of such writing is immense and fascinating, covering history and geography, astronomy and calendrics, crafts and techniques, institutions and customs, and popular legend.
Because notebook fiction was written across so many different periods, its diction varies enormously. Add to that the modern decline in classical literacy, and a great deal of marvelous material has slipped out of common view.
For that reason, I want to recast many lesser-known notebook collections into plain modern prose and offer them to readers, especially works less famous than Youyang Zazu, Yuewei Caotang Biji, or Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.
Notebook fiction is brief, taut, and perfectly suited to the fragmented reading habits of the internet age. I hope every reader can find a small measure of delight in a minute or two of reading.