Curious Tales of a Temple

The film is an animation made up of six separate stories. The stories are taken from Pu Songling’s collection of supernatural tales. All six gather around the Lanruo Temple, an old ruin where spirits move. Among the tales are the Taoist from Laoshan Mountain, Princess Lotus, Nie Xiaoqian and The Painted Skin. The stories hold humans, ghosts and demons together, and their subjects are love, death and morality. Each part is made in a visual language of its own. One uses animation with the texture of felt; another follows the painting of the Song dynasty. The hundred and fifty two minutes are shared among six parts. The work is the joint effort of six directors, Xie Junwei among them, and the Chinese animation was completed in 2025.