The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history.

When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves.

And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over,

turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans.

I'm Tracy and I'm Rich.

And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history.

Look for the Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 225.

Strange Tales 6.

Notes from the Shadow Book.

Hello again.

After a few suitably scrumptious hors d'oeuvres, I'm happy to say it's once again time for this October's main course of suitably strange Chinese stories that will leave your bones chilled, your eyebrows arched, and your hair raised.

Our set of four such tales today comes from the writings of the Qing era Imperial Librarian Ji Yun, whose life was contemporary with the likes of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Marquita Lafayette, just to name a few.

Over the course of his long and winding career, Ji Yun served as a member of the prestigious Hunlean Academy, an institution that had served since the Tang Dynasty as something like the ultimate imperial brain trust of the best and brightest minds China had on offer.

Yet his career path was neither usual nor unblemished by controversy.

In 1768, having become an accessory to a bribery case against his then-brother-in-law, Ji Yun was banished from the capital and exiled to far off Arumqi Xinjiang for nearly three years.

Before finally being allowed to return to the East in 1771.

Long a collector of interesting and weird tales, it was actually only in the twilight of his life that it began writing them down in what would become, probably very much to his own confusion and bemusement had he known, one of his most enduring legacies.

A collection of the bazaar, the strange, and the supernatural that he called the Yu Wei's Haotang BG, meaning detailed notes examining curious minutia as written from my little thatched cottage.

Written over the course of the subsequent nine years and divided into five total volumes, the Yu Wei's Haotang BG, or as it's come to be known in English, the Shadow Book of Ji Yun, compiles in all more than 1200 tales of the strange.

Each and every one of which, in the greatest of storyteller traditions, Ji Yun solemnly swears to be completely and totally true.

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