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The Cricket
A mischievous boy saves a drowning cricket and keeps it in a bamboo cage. When plague comes, the cricket chirps wildly at midnight, driving the whole family outside just before the roof beam collapses. By morning the cricket lies dead.
The Ink Fox
A poor scholar in an abandoned house hears grinding in the night and sees a small ink-black fox licking his inkstone. His writing flourishes — yet what the fox rewards is not talent, but sincerity.
The Regular Guest at the Old Inn
The owner of a riverside inn notices that on the eve of Qingming each year, Room 301 is booked under the same handwriting, though the guest never shows his face. By morning the bed is untouched but for an old ferry ticket for a line that stopped running decades ago.
New Liaozhai: The Eastern Hedge
The hermit Shen Baiyi loves mums; each autumn a plain-clad Tao tends his hedge and shares his verse. Years pass, his hair turns white and hers does not — she is the chrysanthemum. When he dies, one cluster by his grave holds through winter.
The Night Toll Booth
Lao Chen works the night toll booth on the ring road. At 3:07 each night a dark-windowed sedan pulls up and hands him a fistful of water-soaked old coins. He later learns a car went into the river there twenty years ago.
New Liaozhai: The Charred Paulownia
A poor scholar buys a charred, broken-stringed qin; a woman's voice from within teaches him 'Flowing Water,' and at the county gathering a weeping guest knows the piece as his late sister's.
Midnight Records: The Paper Child
Gou the paper craftsman breaks his own rule and models a paper child on a dead boy; on the seventh night the cut paper flowers lie in a ring, and the paper sleeve sways as if to reach them.
Midnight Records: The Porcelain Mender
Zhou the porcelain mender mends a celadon bowl for a widowed old man at night — and beneath the glaze a tiny picture of a lantern-bearing child appears, the very image of the man when young.