When Death is an Improvement: Pu Songling’s “Judge Lu” (陆判)

Man drinks with his buddies. Man upgrades and becomes drinking buddies with one of the grand poobahs of the underworld. Man dies. Man becomes high-ranking bureaucrat in the afterlife. Man becomes more present and caring father and husband from his place in the underworld. That kind of thing happens every day, right? It does in the weird and wonderful world of Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio （聊斋志异）. Join Lee and Rob as they dive back into one of their favorite collections of Chinese fiction.