Strange Tales of the Jianghuai Region 江淮异人录

Compiled by Wu Shu of the Song Dynasty.

Wu Shu, courtesy name Zhengyi, was a native of Danyang in Runzhou. He first served in the Southern Tang Dynasty and later surrendered to the Northern Song Dynasty.

Strange Tales of the Jianghuai Region

Both The History of the Song Dynasty: Biography of Wu Shu and General Bibliography of the Tong zhi record that Wu Shu's Records of Extraordinary Figures in the Jianghuai Region consisted of three volumes, while Chen Zhensun noted it as two volumes in his Annotated Bibliography of the Zhizhai Studio. The existing version in The Daozang is combined into a single volume and classified under the Biographical Category of The Dongxuan Section. The version included in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries was compiled from the Imperial Encyclopedia of the Yongle Reign and divided into two volumes.

This book collects tales of extraordinary Taoist practitioners, swordsmen and knights in the Jianghuai region during the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties period, featuring twenty-five figures including Sima Jiao, the Hermit Qian and Nie Shidao. Each chapter is compiled and arranged from the accounts of previous scholars. Among them, entries such as that of Madame Geng were adopted by Ma Ling and Lu You in their respective works titled History of the Southern Tang, and the entry of Shen Fen also supplements the deficiencies in official historical records.