Professor David Pollard’s masterful translation has made this well-known Chinese classic by Ji Xiaolan, a Qing dynasty high official and man of letters, more accessible to the Western readers. From the author’s five collections of notebooks or “jottings” Pollard has selected the most fascinating accounts, in particular those of “The Supernatural and the Curious” (Part I). A ready successor to Pu Songling’s Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) but more humanly appealing, the book offers a kaleidoscope of everyday life in eighteenth-century China in all its quotidian and fantastic dimensions. An absorbing read, both enlightening and entertaining.
—Leo Ou-fan Lee, The Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture, The Chinese University of Hong Konga
At the end of the eighteenth century, China stood on the eve of a bruising encounter with the wider world that would leave lasting effects. No one better to capture the way things were than a writer with such remarkable encounters with the emperor and the nation’s greatest minds, as well as those who lived on the fringes of empire, and no better translator than David Pollard, who has worked with concise Chinese prose, throughout a long and distinguished academic career. This book is a pleasurable read of scholarly importance, and will become an instant classic among general readers and specialists alike.
—Timothy Barrett, Professor Emeritus of East Asian History, SOAS