Robert Ford Campany sees the genre loosely characterized in its early examples by relatively brief form, often only a list of narrations or description, written in non-rhyming classical prose with a "clear and primary" focus on things which are anomalous, with a Buddhist or Taoist moral.
[2] Lydia Sing-Chen Chiang suggests that one function of the stories in this genre was to provide a "context by which the unknown may be ascribed names and meanings and therefore become 'known,' controlled, and used.
[6] Another of the richest early collections is You Ming Lu, edited by Liu Yiqing (Chinese: 劉義慶, 403-444), who also compiled A New Account of the Tales of the World.
[8] By the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the collections of zhiguai and chuanqi materials had been widely reprinted and supplemented by contemporary works.
[9] His anomalous collection of short pieces Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, which amalgamated zhiguai features with other styles, was left unfinished at his death in 1715.