Leishuo 類說

Leishuo 類說 "Categorized tales" is a collection of short stories, many of them of the phantasmic genre of chuanqi 傳奇 "strange happenings". It was compiled during the Song period 宋 (960-1279) by Zeng Zao 曾慥 (early 12th cent.), courtesy name Duanbo 端伯. He hailed from Jinjiang 晉江 (today in Fujian) and was director in a ministerial office (shangshulang 尚書郎) and managed the Hall for Treasuring Culture (Baowenge 寶文閣). During the Shaoxing reign-period 紹興 (1131-1162), he was exiled to Yinfeng 銀峰, where he dedicated himself to the collection of ancient semi-historiographical stories that he put together to a kind of enyclopaedic book. Zeng Zao also compiled a Daoist encyclopaedia called Daoshu 道樞.

The collection was finished in 1136. The stories included in the 50 juan are intended to serve as model in government, as of educational value, or simply to entertain. There is also a version with 60 juan that is divided into a first and a second collection (ji 集).

The Leishuo includes 252 stories from the Han period 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) to the early Song period. Zeng Zao selected the stories from older books, polished, abbreviated and altered some of them and so transformed the stories into a higher literary genre, especially by cutting out the most phantasmic and superstition-laden parts. Much important is that Zeng Zao noted down which parts had been changed, and for which reasons. The content is very rich and includes poems, interesting events from older persons' lives, stories of ghosts and immortals, the spread of Buddhism and Daoism, and many more. The stories are in most cases preserved in their original form, and the Leishuo is therefore an important source for this literary genre.

The collection is the third important source of ancient short stories, after Wei Zheng's 魏徵 (580-643) Qunshu zhiyao 群書治要 and Ma Zong's 馬總 (c. 800) Yilin 意林, both compiled during the Tang period 唐 (618-907). A great part of the stories are exclusively quoted by Zeng Zao, and thus the Leishuo is an important collection preserving ancient stories. It is therefore included in the series Siku quanshu 四庫全書.

In 1955, the Wenxue Guji Press 文學古籍出版社 published a modern edition.