Book excerpt: A man flies onto a painting and has a romantic affair with a beauty in it. A Taoist monk punishes a stingy and mean pear seller by planting a pear tree that bears fruits in minutes before giving them away for free, all at the expense of the seller. A young scholar is delighted to find a lover of striking beauty, but only to find out later that it is actually an ugly ghost with a painted human skin … This ebook is a translation of forty fascinating stories of supernatural beings like ghosts and fox spirits from The Remarkable Stories Told at a Chinese Salon, one of the masterpieces in Chinese culture.