From First-Person to Third-Person Narrative, and Then to Hakka Ballad: From “Tang Xuan shouji” (Tang Xuan's Manuscript Notes) to “Tang Xuan” to “Tang Xian ji” (The Story of Tang Xian)

The seventeenth of forty chapters on gui 鬼 (ghosts) in Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Extensive records assembled in the Taiping era; 981) contains a tale called “Tang Xuan” 唐晅. It gives its source as Tongyou ji 通幽記 (Communications from the unseen world), a collection compiled by Chen Shao 陳劭 that most likely dates from the last years of the eighth century and that is no longer extant. Right before the attribution to Tongyou ji, we are told by the narrator the following: “Shi jian Tang Xuan shouji” 事見唐晅手記 (the events [of this story] appear in Tang Xuan’s own manuscript notes). Modern scholars such as Li Jiangguo have held this to refer to an originally independently circulating text named Tang Xuan shouji 唐晅手記. In the late Ming, “Tang Xuan” was not only reprinted as part of the Taiping guangji, but also in a number of other collections of classical tales, sometimes under the title of “Tang Xuan shouji.” The story of “Tang Xuan” is very simple in outline. Tang Xuan has married his niece, Zhang Shiniang張十娘, whom he has loved since childhood. After a while he has to leave his wife for a trip to Luoyang. While staying there, he learns from a dream that his wife has passed away. When he eventually returns home after a