Zhiguai xiaoshuo

Zhiguai xiaoshuo (Chinese: 志怪小说), translated as "tales of the miraculous", "tales of the strange", or "records of anomalies", is a type of Chinese literature which appeared in the Han dynasty and developed after the fall of the dynasty in 220 CE and in the Tang dynasty in 618 CE. They were among the first examples of Chinese fiction and deal with the existence of the supernatural, rebirth and reincarnation, gods, ghosts, and spirits.

Robert Ford Campany sees the genre loosely characterized in its early examples by relatively brief form, often only a list of narrations or description, written in non-rhyming classical prose with a "clear and primary" focus on things which are anomalous, with a Buddhist or Taoist moral. Campany, however, does not see the stories as "fiction," since the literati authors believed that their accounts were factual. Lydia Sing-Chen Chiang suggests that one function of the stories in this genre was to provide a "context by which the unknown may be ascribed names and meanings and therefore become 'known,' controlled, and used."

The term zhiguai is an allusion to a passage in the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi.

The early 4th century anthology Sou Shen Ji (In Search of the Supernatural) edited by Gan Bao is the most prominent early source, and contains the earliest versions of a number of Chinese folk legends. Many are of Indian origins and were used for spreading Buddhist concepts, such as reincarnation. Another of the richest early collections is Youming lu, edited by Liu Yiqing (Chinese: 劉義慶, 403-444), who also compiled A New Account of the Tales of the World. In the Tang dynasty, distinction between the zhiguai and chuanqi (strange stories) became increasingly blurred, and there is disagreement over the boundary between the two. Many stories of both types were preserved in the 10th century anthology, Taiping guangji.

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