Original Text
A woodcutter went to market to sell his firewood, and after selling it, he carried his carrying pole on his shoulder and headed home. Suddenly, he felt as if something heavy was hanging from the end of the pole. Turning to look, he saw a headless corpse suspended from it. The woodcutter was greatly startled, shook off the corpse, and beat wildly with his pole, whereupon the corpse vanished. Terrified, he fled in haste until he reached a village. As dusk fell, he saw several people lighting torches and searching the ground, as if looking for something. Drawing near, he asked what they were about, and they replied that while they had been sitting together, a human head had suddenly fallen from the sky, its hair and beard all disheveled, and then it had disappeared in an instant. The woodcutter then recounted what he had seen, and it seemed that the head and the body together made a complete person, though none knew whence they had come. Later, a man was walking along carrying a basket when he suddenly saw a human head inside it. Others asked in astonishment what had happened, and the man, himself greatly alarmed, tipped the head onto the ground, where it rolled a few times and then vanished.
Commentary
Viewed in isolation, this tale is abrupt, startling, grotesque, and terrifying, truly a case of "though the people are not beyond civilization, events may be stranger than in lands of shorn hair; though the eyelashes are before the eyes, wonders surpass those of the flying-head kingdom." But if we connect this piece with tales such as "Wild Dog," "Ghostly Wailing," "Rolling Head," "Fair Head," "Guts Drawn Out," and "Brocade Zither," then these chapters are clearly freeze-frames of the bloody scenes witnessed too often during the tumultuous Ming-Qing period, the developed images of disordered nerves where what was seen by day became what was dreamed by night.