The Shackles Behind the Smile: From Forest Sprite to Mortal Wife in 'Yingning'

'Yingning' (often misspelled as 'Yingning') from 'Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio' is Pu Songling's most famous work, creating a classic literary image of someone who 'loves to laugh,' breaking the stereotype of female ghosts and fox spirits being seductive or sorrowful. The story begins with the scholar Wang Zifu falling instantly in love with a maiden holding a plum blossom at the Lantern Festival. He falls ill from longing. He ventures alone into the mountains and finds Yingning, a fox spirit raised by a ghost mother. Yingning is innocent and naive, loving to laugh intensely, often giggling uncontrollably in any situation. Wang Zifu then brings her back to the human world and marries her. However, this innocence undergoes a transformation upon entering the human world. One day, a lustful neighbor spies on Yingning, coveting her beauty. Yingning devises a plan to punish him, but it leads to the neighbor's accidental death and a lawsuit. Afterward, her mother-in-law scolds her, saying her excessive laughter caused trouble. Yingning then realizes the dangers of the human world and the constraints of social etiquette, and from then on, she 'never laughed again,' completing a painful transformation from a 'forest sprite' to a 'worldly daughter-in-law.' Pu Songling laments at the end that the world is full of fake and sycophantic smiles, while Yingning's genuine, heartfelt laughter is not accepted by society. On the surface, this story is a romantic tale of a fox spirit's marriage, but it actually embodies the author's praise for the natural expression of human nature and his helpless satire of feudal etiquette suppressing it.