Like the Arabian Nights and The Decameron, Idle Talk under the Bean Arbour is a collection of short stories and folk tales, told by a group of villagers seeking shelter from the sun under a cool bean arbour. There's the mythological: a court official becomes an immortal. There's the surreal: a captain rises from the dead and decapitates his enemy. And then there's the farcical: a first-time bandit bungles the job and gets beat up by his seventy-year-old victim. If beach reads had existed back in Qing dynasty more than 400 years ago, this collection would have surely made the bestseller list.