3 pieces from Tales of the Marvelous — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
The great tragic romance of the Tang. The courtesan Huo Xiaoyu gives everything to the scholar Li Yi, who swears devotion and then abandons her for a respectable marriage; she dies of grief — and returns as a vengeful ghost to poison every union he tries to make. Love, betrayal, and revenge from beyond the grave.
A redemption romance that inverts the tragedy. The courtesan Li Wa ruins a smitten young nobleman, who falls to singing funeral dirges for coppers and freezing in the streets — then she takes him back, nurses him whole, and drives him to pass the imperial exams. Bai Xingjian's tale of a woman who undoes her own damage.
The Tang original behind The Romance of the Western Chamber — and far more unsparing. The scholar Zhang wins the reluctant Cui Yingying through her maid Hongniang, loves her, then abandons her and calls it wisdom. The star-crossed romance that Chinese theater spent centuries trying to give a kinder ending.