What happens when one storytelling style dominates the world? – ‘I realised this, at first, when I was reading Strange Tales of the Chinese Studio, a novel written at the end of the Ming dynasty. I was amused that each story ended in a way that would make most Western readers (and probably modern Chinese ones) frustrated. It doesn’t always end with justice for the protagonist. It seems to say to us: Well, life is like this, what can we do?… What most Westerners would call a “bad ending.”’