Abstract:As the earliest Chinese version, Hai Wai Qi Tan(《海外奇谭》) was published by Shanghai Dawen Press in 1903, taking as its original text Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.Although this anonymous translation is earlier than the famous Lin Shu's Yin Bian Yan Yu(《吟边燕语》, 1904), it has rarely been known to academia up till now, without any special investigation, despite the fact that it reflected the relations between the translator's choices/misreading concerning language, style, narrative pattern and the readers' reception in late Qing Dynasty, broke up the stereotyped style unique to Chinese Zhanghui(章回) fiction, and kept a nice balance between rewriting and reproduction, and domestication and foreignization, leaving a useful example of narrative structure and plot arrangement.Moreover, Hai Wai Qi Tan(un)intentionally initiated Chinese translation of short stories.