子不語

by 袁枚

《子不語》，又名《新齊諧》，文言筆記小說，清代袁枚著，共24卷，又有續集10卷。與紀昀《閱微草堂筆記》一書齊名。

Genres: Fiction, China, Horror, Literature, Short Stories, Collections, Chinese Literature

421 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1788

About the author

袁枚（1716－1797年），清代诗人、诗论家。字子才，号简斋，晚年自号苍山居士，钱塘（今浙江杭州）人。袁枚是乾隆、嘉庆时期代表诗人之一，与赵翼、蒋士铨合称为“乾隆三大家”；与赵翼、张问陶合称为“性灵派三大家”。晚年隐居随园。...

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just brilliant. Earlier this year I'd read a French translation of some of these stories, but this was 100 of 750 and so a lot of these stories were new to me. It seems like the translators picked the naughtiest ones for this collection. They were wonderful ghost stories full of sex. My favourite was about a young gay couple who were killed and then their local town dedicated a temple to them and they turned into gods. The local magistrate tried to have the temple destroyed but the couple defended themselves and the temple was rebuilt. There was cross dressing and gender transformation, posession by ghosts, a monk who was reborn who became obsessed with pornography and group sex, but was still enlightened. Some stories were a bit disgusting including pooing in a skull and eating poo, and necrophilia but on the whole the lessons were not all ghosts are bad and justice is done. I hope one day a full translation of all these stories is made and I am able to study enough to be able to read them all in the original Chinese.

[Helmut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worüber Konfuzius nicht sprach
Dies ist der wörtlich übersetzte Titel des Werks 子不語 von Yuan Mei, aus dem die Episoden in diesem Buch entnommen wurden, leider nur in kleiner Auswahlform. Episoden deshalb, weil die Klassifizierung als "Geschichten" nur in einigen der Fällen zutrifft: Wie üblich bei Sammlungen dieser Art sind die Erzählungen sehr kurz (oft unter einer Seite sogar), fragmentarisch und ohne die Struktur (Einleitung, Hauptteil, Schluss), die wir selbst von Märchen und Sagen erwarten. Wer die Sammlungen von Pu Songling oder Ling Mengchu kennt, weiß bereits, worauf er sich da einlässt.

Es handelt sich oberflächlich betrachtet um eine wilde Mischung aus Klatsch und Tratsch, fiktiven Augenzeugenberichten, Geistergeschichten, plakativer Erotik und dem, was man als Münchhauseniade bezeichnen könnte; passend dazu auch der Titel, denn Konfuzius, der mit seinem strengstarren Regelwerk des sozialen Zusammenlebens die gesamte chinesische Kultur extrem prägte, hatte es nicht so mit derartigem fantastischem Realitätsverlust. Viele Literati in der chinesischen Geschichte stellten sich mit dieser bei der (traditionell erzkonservativen) Regierung ungeliebten Thematik gern konträr zurselbigen, eine milde Form des revolutionären Verhaltens sozusagen; bei Yuan Mei, der in der ausufernden Qing-Prüfungskultur nur sehr mäßig erfolgreich war, könnte ich mir diesen Beweggrund als Motivation gut vorstellen. Für andere war es eine Geistesübung, die, um eine Unterscheidung aus der Musiktheorie zu bemühen, so gar nicht hochstehenden "U"-Themen mit Mitteln des "E"-Stils zu verfeinern - Pu Songling beispielsweise perfektionierte damit seinen ellipsistischen Stil des klassischen Chinesisch.

Wem die allgemeine Stimmung dieser Geschichten gefällt, aber gern eine strukturierte Form hätte, dem lege ich die drei Sammlungen von Feng Menglong ans Herz - er arbeitete seine Geschichten komplett aus, hantierte aber mit sehr ähnlichen Topoi.

Ein sehr lesenswerter, hochkompetent übersetzter und edierter Blick auf eine Facette der chinesischen Kultur, Geschichte und des Sozialwesens, die vor Unterhaltungswert nur so strotzt, die seit es Literatur gibt bis heute in China beliebt ist und die selbst der große Meister Kong nicht ausrotten konnte. Wer gern europäische Märchen und Sagen liest, sollte sich diesen Exkurs in den exotischen Osten nicht entgehen lassen.

[Eressea · Rating 3 out of 5]

20230719補記：BOT改本書狀態為刪除且編輯頁面進不去，五天後再次點編輯可以開了，救回一本書
--
號稱全本實為潔本，扣一星

去年底開始消滅文言文藏書
選了閱微草堂筆記
想起大學時看過袁枚的子不語
印像中充滿色情小故事
先在中國亞馬遜上找來號稱全本的電子書
結果看一看發現關鍵字都被刪了，是假全本
才想到KOBO上可能會有繁體書
一找之下發現有免費的電子書可看
只是沒有續子不語，花錢買潔本真是不值啊

於是乎先把未刪節的子不語看完
再回頭看花錢買的簡體續子不語
結果整套看完只有控鶴監秘記二則和急淫自縊
符合我大學時A書的印象
真奇怪，記得大學時看子不語一堆酒後亂性的故事
玉山將頹之後下略數百字之類的
怎麼重看都沒了
簡體書還算有良心刪節處都有標明
但其實也沒刪幾篇或幾個字
不曉得記憶跟其他什麼書混淆了

大概是那兩篇太A了
導致中華書局沒有出全註全譯
KOBO上的免費版不知道底本是啥
簡體版也只有句讀無註釋
只能硬啃標點版原文
好在明清筆記我已經不太需要翻譯了
頂多偶爾需要查查專有名詞而已

袁枚做過好幾個地方的知縣又有政聲
看起來要是繼續當官的話應該也能變成大學士或尚書吧
而且才子辭官後日子過得挺滋潤
所以全書散發一種吃飽太閒看八卦小報的氣氛
書裡大多都是沒啥故事性的獵奇八卦，偶爾有一點說教
但比起閱微草堂筆記那種我就是要說教的語氣
子不語的道德判斷比較像是聽聞一則故事後有感而發
跟蒲松齡比起來，袁才子給人遊刃有餘的印象
真的要說，還是聊齋的故事完整又好看
但看看古人的腦洞獵奇幻想也是挺有趣的~

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading this, I seriously hoped that this book is not like "Pu Songling's masterpiece", that one had so many ghost and fox-lady stories that I lost count and they started blurring together. Granted, this one has tons and tons of ghost stories as well, but less fox stories and overall the stories seem to be more varied than the one in Pu´s collection.
Sadly, one thing this 2 volume work had in common with the translation of Pu´s work, was a damn long introduction. Sure, at first it was interesting to read that Yuan Mei was a bit of an odd ball in many ways back then and might have actually advocated for listening to "barbarian music" or treating prostitutes decently. However, when I was on page 115 of this book and the introduction was still not over, I just didn´t care anymore. And the introduction was telling you so much about the tales later on that I asked what is the point of printing them anyway. It took the book until page 160 to be done with the introduction. 160 pages of introduction!!!! Why the translator considered that necessary is completely beyond me.
Naturally, due to the nature of the genre of Yuan Mei´s collection, one has to expect some weird tales, I mean, it starts with one store where five fingernails flew in the form of a golden dragon several dozen feet longout of a package and another story where Heaven´s judgement is written on the body of a person in sulphuruous dust, while another one referres to a mythical period that might very well be a period before the creation of the Earth as we know it, if the Queen Nüwa mentioned in it was referring to the goddess Nüwa.
And while some things and concepts were easy to grasp simply from the stories itself (like being willingly reborn as a donkey to repay a debt), others (like rice juice being connected to people coming back from the dead) were not so easy to understand. You just have to accept their content as is given.
And it became clear after a while how many, many ghost stories there were in this collection. And an awful lot of people converse with them, so you could argue that they defy Heaven's law, then again, the ghosts approach them, not the other way around. And there was one story with a butterfly monster, which reminded me of something but I cannot remember what it was. Another curious element was when in one story it was stated that "there came the chirping of a male phoenix and a white crane in the heavens." But a male phoenix? These stories were published in the late 18th century and even this Yang Bin mentioned lived in the 17th century, so definitely long after the Yuan Dynasty. I thought at this time the image of the fenghuang was a singular female bird. Or was there a translation error? Granted, that one wasn´an actually strange story, truly strange stories were much more bizarre in their content. Like getting to the several levels of Heaven by being swallowed during an earthquake. Well, you can when you are able of "metamorphosis" and so can pass through the various levels of earth that would otherwise kill you. At least that story was easy to understand. In another case I still wonder whether it actually suggested that the smell of a corpse transformed into demon birds. And the first story featuring a dragon, is about a man who basically got a magic hand that got him to make special medicine that cures immediately. That is the first time I came across this feature of chinese dragons, interesting to read. In two others I wondered whether the featured black gecko was the later black dragon or whether the golden dogs in another story were also all dragons or somehow transformed into dragons. And it was still a quite ordinary one in comparison, to e.g. One with a monster that was a three ­chi long caterpillar of the straw raincoat moth with thousands of tiny feet that looked like glimmering silk. And I have no clue what sort of moth that is, I couldn't find it. The fox stories (even the odd ones where they change into something other than humans) that were featured here and there or the story of a "jian" (the ghost of a ghost) was quite ordinary in comparison. And while giving birth to a dragon seems odd enough, how does one give birth to a Kylin? A raksha, fine, it is humanoid, but a kylin is an ungulate and basically horse/cow-shaped. How is that even possible?
Some stories also gave interesting insights into the culture that they came from, like the many stories were being reincarnated as a woman was a punishment or how you should not be friends with actors, or for that matter, women basically functioning as spirit/ghost mediums. Granted a story where a servant is being fed to his master´s horse was just plain weird, how is that even possible? What horse would eat human meat and how would it do that?
But enough of that, that Bo'er elephant in one story sounds familiar, it's description reminds me of that Ancient Egyptian heart eating monster. This one here is raised in the Netherworld and devours the guilty souls. Is there a connection?
One reason that I started reading this book is that the author was stated to be one of those who wrote/collected homoerotic stories and allegedly he was an actual bisexual. However, there weren´t that many stories in here who had anything that could be considered "homoerotic" in any way. The first story of that kind didn´t appear until 27.97% of the book and it only had a man named Zhang, who had "assumed one of the other guests had retired to his bed to enjoy sex with a houseboy." However, I have no idea how old that houseboy was and whether he could even have refused the guest´s sexual advances. Which then says a lot that I was thankful that it turned out to be two goats fucking in the bed... not sure how you could mistake their sounds for humans, though. And sex is often seen as something bad here. And despite many claims, this book doesn´t show tolerance or acceptance at all, as one story also shows where some bearded guy straight up says that he wouldn do the impertinence of sodomizing a colleagues son when his concubine suggests he take the guy as his male concubine. After all, if it is accepted, what is the problem?
Shortly afterwards there was a story that was only the third chinese folklore story I ever came across that features human to animal transformation (the book has a werewolf story later on as well). And in the latter two, they both feature people from "the South", here the woman who transforms into a dangerous bird creature is from the Miao people. And this story states that she was "an old green-eyed woman with an arrow piercing straight through her midriff, fresh blood still trickling out. Resembling a monkey, she was a woman from the Miao tribe whom Li had brought back home with him from Yunnan. And although she is stated to be honest, she is also stated to transform into a bird and have killed many babies. So, is this an example of Han racism towards Miao people? And in the story of the "Black-headed prince" it states that the crow that was hit was no crow but said prince. Does that mean we have a case of humans transforming into crows? Because human to animal transformations have been rare in east Asian stories in my experience so far. Or are these beings something entirely different? They are not stated to be gods, spirits, ghosts or monsters, so what are they?
And naturally, the story elements that diverge most from what would be considered normal by Han standards are found either on the periphery of the Qing empire or outside of it. So you don´t just find the before mentioned Miao woman, but hairy men in the past Huguang province, which can't be touched by bullets, an iron eating monster from Hubei (the footnote says that "Mo" refers to tapirs today) and "anthropomorphs", called Geli by Khalkha mongols, in Mongolia. And speaking of odd things at the periphery, while most footnotes here are helpful, sometimes, I had no clue what one was referring to. Like one about evil turtle spirits. And speaking of a turtle: In one story, the turtle spirit tells Hua that she wants him as her husband and the daoist monk that is supposed to exorcize her, wants him as his homoerotic lover. That is unusual as Hua is already married and so probably over 20, unusual for Qing "homoerotic" fiction, they want them much, much younger and way more feminine. However the monk says that this is slander and I wonder, why. I know several reasons as to why that would be considered slander but the story doesn´t tell. And another footnote states that "Shanxiao" can be translated as mandrill or mountain elf, and considered that the creature described here wears a red hat, is thin and black as a monkey, green hair under the neck, and only one leg, I really think the translator should have used "mountain elf" instead of mandrill. Especially since mandrills are restricted to one area in Africa and not the Yunnan province.
And speaking of daoists: Being in the same room as a woman who had just given birth polluted a Daoist so much that without the monks' help he would have fallen into Hell?! What is it with all those allegedly so powerful pure beings in this collection, how come, they can be polluted so easily? Why doesn't their purity negate the pollution at least once?
And again, I wonder why what Cheng did was considered terrible? The rape, the fact that his student was already 19 years old? That he was from a wealthy family? So many questions.
Btw. These "gay" stories are more prevalent then usual, but they seem to be on the darker side and far from the accepting and tolerant society I have heard many describe the Qing empire to be in this matter. The first story where a catamite is mentioned, is about him and his master raping women.
Another story with "gay" content, was about an "exceptionally handsome young man" who was about to be raped by some hooligans until his dead dog posessed another dog and bit one hooligans' balls off. And I wonder how the author imaged the young man to look like. There is no evidence for a feminine appearance as in other literati tales. Another instance of homosexual content, was how younger men are sodomised by the wooden statues in the temple. And yes raped, as the men were asleep and felt repugnance in the nightmare.
The Rabbit God story is in this as well. I wonder how old this provincial governor of Fujian was if he is said to have passed the imperial examination at a very young age. Also, this Hu who became the rabbit god is said to be in charge of matters relating to men who love men, but the mentioned custom of Fujian is "having a relationship with a male" and seems to be disconnected from Hu.
And btw. Yes, the ghost stories continued throughout the book. So, so many ghost stories, it was hard to get through them sometimes. I found stories like a man apparently being a "spider spirit" and heaven trying to kill it, much more interesting. And one of the ways Heaven does, is by sending down a fire dragon. Speaking of dragons, there were some more dragon tales in this, including evil ones, boas cultivating themselves to become dragons or one where a woman gives birth to a dragon because she ate a plum that was once part of a dragon´s ear. Another story seems to exonorate empress Wu Zetian and even be somewhat critical of the practice of arranged marriage. Interesting.There was even a story that was an open critigue of footbinding, that is a first from a text from that time period.
And for something so allegedly special, immortals occur quite often in this book. And the end of one story with an immortal contradicts all the other ghost stories before, as it claims that ghosts can't haunt people. But we saw them haunting people time and again.
When a girl grabbed the servant boy, tied him up, hang him on a tree and threatened him, I knew she couldn't be human, no woman ever in this story collection ever acted anything like this, unless she was supernatural. The only question was, what sort of supernatural she was. Here she was a "Fox fairy." Even in another story where I at first thought that the martial arts woman was not supernatural, she became a goddess in the end, so I guess she still isn´t normal. Why do so many men become gods in these stories? And what is so special about them? And why has there been only one case of a woman becoming a god, ok maybe two if you count the first dragon mother story, at least female ghosts have the same possibilities of getting justice as their male counterparts.
And it was nice to have a few stories not about people heading to the examination for a change, those examination elements were quite common in this collection as well.
This collection also mentioned the White Lotus Society that I came across in other places and this here claims that the society murders pregnant women and steals their babies. And I finally found a story that truly mentions, somewhat, what daoist cultivation is. Apparently in one story one element is drinking pure water to purify yourself of parasites until you become light and can live of air. In another it was following religious doctrine without going into specifics.
Not that all the stories were interesting though, in one case for instance the story was so uninteresting that its footnote was quite fascinating. It gave a "short" overview about the concept of hun and po. Apparently it began to spread in the 6th century BC and despite common believe it was not a widespread faith during the Han Dynasty but a theory among academics and before this dualistic concept began to develop, po alone seems to have been used for "soul."
And speaking of not so good stuff, there were several stories that not only showed examples of sexism of the times, but also racism. Like how a description of a hairy man from Yunnan sounds a lot like racist carricatures of europeans: hairy, huge, square eyes, hooked nose, protruding teeth. Or saying the Black Miao Tribe are black men covered in hair, with a speech sounding like chirping birds, making nests out of grass and lived in them in the treetops and being maneaters... wow, A+ racism. And another story states that Thai men marry and have sex with donkeys. The first mention of witches in this collection assigns such practices solely to the "Li Tribe" (again, located in the South) and why is it that every time "black magic" is performed here it is associated with the South and when an ethnicity is mentioned, it is non-Han? These Li witches cannot even curse Han peope here, but they can curse Li people. And the people of Champa are said to be cannibals who eat the gallbladder of living people. And why on earth would they always put a chinese gallbladder on the top of others?
So yeah, this is quite the collection here, with many many strange tales in it.

[Evelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I am trying to keep its cultural significance in mind in my rating, overall I found this to be a mediocre collection. Almost every story was about sex, real and ghostly, consensual and non-consensual. To the point of excess. Some stories weren't even about spirits of any kind! I would have enjoyed a more varied look at the type of ghost stories that Confucius would have censored beyond the ghosts that grope people in their sleep and such. More varied ghosts! Demons! I know there's more and this collection just wasn't giving it. Some stories were fine, with some even giving us depictions of queerness that sometimes even went ok for the person in the story, but the further in I got, the more I found this book as a whole to just be ok.

[Matthias Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eine großartige Sammlung - ein Auszug aus den beiden großen Kompilationen von Yuan Mei. Thematisch auf Geister, Wiedergänger und Gespenster fokussiert geben sie ein Bild von einer (nichtkonfuzianischen) Welt, in der die Grenzen zwischen Diesseits und Jenseits ganz anders als im Westen konstruiert sind. Ach ja, Sex gibt es auch noch in den verschiedensten Spielarten. Weniger ernsthaft als Ji Yun, zumindest in dieser Auswahl spektakulärer als Pu Songling. Unbedingt zu empfehlen.

[Nick Klagge]

https://www.klagge.net/post/my-july-2...

[兀鹘 · Rating 3 out of 5]

因为《七根凶简》所以找来看看，倒是有部分新奇的脑洞蛮好看，算是旧时人们对怪力乱神传言的一个缩影，也是旧时人们价值观的一个侧面展现。《唱歌犬》是最吓人。

[Eressea · Rating 4 out of 5]

書評見
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this in Paris last summer. I'd heard of Yuan Mei's stories for years but never come across a translation before. This was a really good one. It started with an introduction that was a biography of Yuan Mei, including lots of quotes about him by his contemporaries. The translations were well annotated and included the original Chinese title and where they were located in the original collection. There was also a good afterword that examined the common themes of the stories and looked at them in a wider context. I liked that this followed the stories as normally in an English translation this would come first and ruin some of the mystery of the stories.

I must admit I found the French quite difficult and will have to re-ead this when my French improves. A lot I was only able to understand from having read many Zhiguai tales before. But I was still able to discern lots of interesting things about this collection compared with others. Unlike the stories of Pu Songling these were much shorter and much more in keeping with earlier stories. What struck me however was these weren't tales of the distance past but tales of Yuan Mei's contemporaries, people that he'd known, studied with, or knew by reputation. Nearly all the stories were set in the 18th century. It was also interesting to see so many stories about Guan Yu as a deity. This was something I'd not come across before. He definitely features less heavily in other collections I've read. There were also nice tales about homosexuality, cross-dressing, foxes, demons, ghosts, and some on gender issues too.

After buying this I found there is an English translation as well (however I'm not sure that it will be as good as I don't quite like the way they translated the title into English). But I will read it and hope that it increases my understanding next time I go back and re-read this version.

[MIL]

袁枚喜歡寫色色的東西...
裡面有幾則故事有提到台灣，很有趣

[Icyfarrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

拖了好久，因为是小故事集，所以并没有一口气看下去的吸引力。感觉有些故事像段子，男男的故事还挺多