Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

The second episode of the animated anthology Yao-Chinese Folktales 2 (中国奇谭2) , titled "Ear Dweller (耳中人)," presents a puzzle. It is not a straightforward narrative but a dense, visual poem about desire. While its sibling episode "How to Be Three Dragons" deals with communal aspiration, this story turns inward. It asks what happens when a lonely heart fixates on an impossible fantasy. The tale is an adaptation, yet it boldly reimagines its source to probe the darker corners of longing. At its core, it is a portrait of obsession—how it begins as a whisper and grows into a scream that drowns out the real world. A Seed from Strange Tales The story finds its roots in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异). The original is brief: a scholar named Tan Jinxuan (谭晋玄), obsessed with Daoyin (导引) breathing exercises, hears a tiny person speaking in his ear. He coaxes it out, only for a neighbor’s interruption to scare it away. The scholar then falls into madness. This classical tale serves as a clear warning against excessive fixation, or what Buddhism calls Wo Zhi (我执), the attachment to self. The animated version takes this seed and plants it in richer, more…