Original Text
Outside the passes, in the mountains, there are many deer. The locals place a deer head atop their own, crouch in the grass, roll up leaves and blow to produce sounds, and the deer come flocking. Yet among the herds, stags are few and does many; when a stag mates with the does, even if there be a thousand does, the stag must mate with them all, and thus the stag will die from exhaustion. The does, smelling the stag and knowing it is dead, scatter into the valleys, fetch a strange herb, and place it at the stag's mouth to fumigate it; in an instant, the stag revives. At this moment, the locals hastily beat gongs and fire guns, startling the deer into flight. Then they take this herb, which can restore the dead to life.
Commentary
Traditional Chinese pharmacology highly valued miraculous elixirs and divine herbs, and in the past, the fronts of herbal medicine shops often displayed images of deer or cranes holding immortal grasses or lingzhi fungus in their mouths, as these creatures were believed to be connected to immortals or symbols of longevity. This tale likely draws from folk legends about how the so-called "immortal herb" capable of raising the dead was gathered. Though the story is absurd and fantastical, it vividly depicts the lives of animals and the process by which herb gatherers collect medicinal ingredients. Feng Zhenluan, in his commentary on Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, remarked: "Literature employs the method of placing oneself in another's situation... Su Shi's poem on a painting of wild geese says: 'When wild geese see a man, before they rise, their intent has already changed. From where did you observe, to capture this state of being unobserved?' This is the subtlety of literary thought, the so-called method of placing oneself in another's situation. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio embodies this principle throughout."