Overview

A woman seduces her landlord to extort the family farm. Gamblers recruit a wily prostitute to get a rich young man back in the game. Silver counterfeiters wreak havoc for traveling merchants. A wealthy widow is drugged and robbed by a lodger posing as a well-to-do student. Vengeful judges and corrupt clerks pervert the course of justice. Cunning soothsayers spur on a plot to overthrow the emperor. Yet good sometimes triumphs, as when amateur sleuths track down a crew of homicidal boatmen or a cold-case murder is exposed by a frog. These are just a few of the tales of crime and depravity appearing in More Swindles from the Late Ming, a book that offers a panorama of vice-and words of warning-from one seventeenth-century writer. This companion volume to The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection presents sensational stories of scams that range from the ingenious to the absurd to the lurid, many featuring sorcery, sex, and extreme violence. Together, the two volumes represent the first complete translation into any language of a landmark Chinese anthology, making an essential contribution to the global literature of trickery and fraud. An introduction explores the geography of grift, the role of sex and family relations, and the portrayal of Buddhist clergy and others claiming supernatural powers. Opening a window onto the colorful world of crime and deception in late imperial China, this book testifies to the enduring popularity of stories about scoundrels and their schemes.

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9780231212441

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Reviews

It is wonderful to now have the lively and complete translation of this curious text. -- Andrew Schonebaum, author of <i>Novel Medicine: Healing, Literature, and Popular Knowledge in Early Modern China</i>

It is wonderful to now have the lively and complete translation of this curious text. -- Andrew Schonebaum, author of <i>Novel Medicine: Healing, Literature, and Popular Knowledge in Early Modern China</i> Think scams are something modern? More Swindles from the Late Ming proves otherwise. If, upon reading the book, you find yourself worried that there’s something disturbingly timeless about human behavior like this, never fear! Each swindle is followed by stern advice for the nervous reader; i.e., “It’s simply safer to marry local.” -- Tori Telfer, author of <i>Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion</i>

Author Information

Zhang Yingyu (fl. 1612–1617) lived during the Wanli period (1573–1620) of the Ming dynasty. Bruce Rusk is an associate professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia. He is coeditor of Literary Information in China: A History (Columbia, 2021), among other books. Christopher Rea is a professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia. His books include Chinese Film Classics, 1922–1949 (Columbia, 2021). Rusk and Rea are the translators of The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection (Columbia, 2017).

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