The following episode is from Chapter 102 of The Story of the Stone: The Dreamer Wakes 萬境歸空, translated by John Minford, Penguin Books, 1986. Charms and Holy Water are Used to
Exorcize Prospect Garden 大觀園符水驅妖孽   Skybright’s cousin, Wu Gui, lived, it will be remembered, opposite the rear gate-house of the Garden.… Read

During the Six Dynasties [六朝, 220-589 CE] a new prose genre, the zhiguai 志怪 tale [or ‘tales of the strange and supernatural’], emerged clearly from the mass of occasional writings of China’s literati.… Read