Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
Painted Skin
画皮
Painted Skin (画皮, Huà pí) is a story from the Chinese classic by Pu Songling, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 2 (Elementary).
Retold from Pu Songling's classic ghost tale in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: a kind scholar takes in a lovely stray girl, and an old Taoist warns him she is not what she seems.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells the strange tale plainly, like a grandfather by the fire.
- Wang Sheng · 王生 — A gentle young scholar with a soft heart, who reads many books and believes what they say.
- Chen · 陈氏 — Wang's sharp-eyed, practical wife, who notices what her husband misses and would do anything for him.
- The Girl · 姑娘 — A lovely, shy girl with a bundle who says she has run away from home and has nowhere to go.
- The Taoist · 道士 — A stern old priest with a horsehair whisk and a red gourd who can see evil air on people's faces.
- The Mad Beggar · 疯乞丐 — A ragged old man who sings nonsense in the muddy market and tests those who ask him for help.
- The Demon · 妖怪 — A green-faced demon with sawtooth teeth who paints a lovely human skin and wears it as a costume.
- The Onlookers · 路人 — The townspeople in the market, who laugh at the sight of a lady kneeling in the mud.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Girl by the Road
路边的姑娘
A kind scholar brings home a crying girl who has nowhere to go, and a stranger in the market warns him about her.
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Chapter 2: The Window
窗户里的东西
Wang laughs at the Taoist's warning, then goes to look through the window of the little room and sees something he will never forget.
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Chapter 3: The Night Visitor
夜里的客人
With the whisk on the door, Wang and Chen wait in the dark, until a sweet voice knocks and asks to come in.
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Chapter 4: The Beggar's Gift
疯乞丐的礼物
Chen goes to the market and gets down on her knees for a strange old man, because he may be the only one who can wake her husband.
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Key words in Painted Skin
Behind the story
Painted Skin (画皮) comes from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异), a collection of nearly five hundred stories about ghosts, fox spirits and demons by Pu Songling (蒲松龄, 1640–1715). Pu failed the imperial examinations again and again and spent much of his life as a village teacher, writing down the strange and touching tales he heard.
The story is all about faces. A lovely girl turns out to be a demon wearing a painted skin, and a wife who is laughed at in public turns out to be the person who saves her husband. Chinese readers know it from books, operas, films and TV series, and today people still say 画皮 for a pretty mask that hides something ugly.
Did you know?
- Liaozhai (聊斋) was the name of Pu Songling's study, so the book's title means something like “Records of Strange Things from the Liaozhai Studio.”
- An old Chinese saying goes “You can paint a tiger's skin, but not its bones” (画虎画皮难画骨), and it is often followed by “You know a person's face, but not their heart” (知人知面不知心).
- The Taoist in the tale carries a whisk (拂尘), a wand of horsehair that Taoist priests hold as a sign of a calm, clean spirit, and he traps the demon in a gourd (葫芦).