Original Text
In Xincheng there lived a scholar named Wang Qihou, who was the great-grandson of the venerable Wang Zhongyu, also known as Wang Xiangkun, the Left Provincial Administrator of Shanxi. He once saw a woman enter his room, dark-skinned and stout, of uncomely appearance, who approached his bed with a smile, displaying an extremely frivolous and intimate demeanor. Wang Qihou rejected her, yet she did not leave. From then on, whether he was sitting or lying down, he always saw her, but his will remained steadfast and unshaken. The woman grew furious, struck him across the face with her hand, making a slapping sound, yet it caused little pain. She then hung a sash from the beam, grabbed Wang Qihou by the hair, and tried to hang herself with him. Unwittingly, Wang Qihou found himself beneath the beam, stretching out his neck as if to hang himself. People saw him standing suspended in the air, his feet not touching the ground, yet he did not die. From then on, Wang Qihou fell into a mad frenzy. One day he suddenly said, "She is about to jump into the river with me," and immediately ran wildly toward the river, but people held him back. Such antics occurred frequently, several times a day, and neither sorcery nor medicine proved effective. One day, he suddenly saw a warrior enter, dragging a chain, who roared in anger, "How dare you harass an honest and upright man!" He immediately locked the chain around the woman's neck and dragged her out through the window lattice. As soon as they were outside, the woman lost her human form, her eyes flashing like lightning and her mouth gaping like a blood-filled basin. Wang Qihou recalled that in the City God's temple there were four clay figurines of minor demons, and she closely resembled one of them. From that day on, Wang Qihou's affliction vanished.
Commentary
In the context of ancient China's underdeveloped medical knowledge, the inability to provide correct explanations for certain ailments often led to the association of mental disorders with supernatural phenomena, rendering them deeply mysterious. From a modern medical perspective, the hallucinations and auditory delusions experienced by Wang Qihou in "The Temple Ghost" could well be attributed to mental illness. The eventual cessation of his hallucinations might simply indicate a remission of the disease. However, Pu Songling interprets this as the evil spirit being eradicated by divine forces—on one hand, reflecting the influence of Chinese shamanistic medical theories, and on the other, embodying Pu Songling's admiration for the spirit of simplicity and integrity in human character.
The image of evil spirits in "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" is generally depicted as "eyes flashing like lightning, mouth dripping blood as red as a basin," which is somewhat conceptualized, and this story is no exception. Tracing its origins, it stems from the vulgarization and solidification of the yaksha in Buddhist scriptures.