STORY

Yu Jing was a student at Liquan Temple. While he was reading at night, he heard a girl’s voice from outside, “Mr. Yu you are such a hardworking student!” Shocked, Yu stood up from his chair and saw a beautiful girl in a long, green dress come in the door. They quickly became “involved” with one another and she visited him every night since.

One night Yu and the girl in green were drinking and talking about music. Yu asked the girl to sing for him. She said, “If I sing for you, no one else should hear my voice.” She sang very quietly into his ears. After the song, she walked around the room and made sure no one was listening to her. When she was about to leave, the girl in green asked Yu to send her off. “You can only return to your room after I disappear from your sight!” said the girl. And Yu sent her off.

When Yu was about to go to sleep, he heard the girl cry for help. He ran outside, looked around, and found that the sound came from under overhang of the rooftop. He looked up to examine it and saw a giant spider catching something with its web. He broke the web, untangled the prey, just to find a green bumblebee that was dying. He put the bumblebee on his desk and let it rest. After a while when it came to live, the bumblebee dived into the ink and spelled out “Thank you”, before it flew away through the window. Yu never saw the bumblebee or the girl in green ever again.

WHY THIS IS COOL

This is one of many stories where a human male becomes involved with a girl whose human form is transformed from an animal spirit. All the weird details about this girl that do not make sense at first explain themselves by the end of the story. Two things notable about the Girl in Green and her relationship with Yu are that she never married him and they are connected intellectually - both are rare and “edgy” among similar stories of the same era.

Another theme in this story is “rescue”. A human male saving an animal spirit whose human transformation he is involved with is very common in Chinese ghost stories. This one is unique in that the rescue happened after they companied each other and was the last time they saw each other.

ORIGIN

Xiao Ren from Liao Zhai Zhi Yi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio). Vol 5, pp.363, Zhong Zhou Gu Ji Press.

Above is the original translation of the synopsis of the story.