The Book of Swindles

The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late-Ming China, featuring an array of smooth operators, crooks, and charlatans, from unscrupulous merchants and corrupt officials to covetous monks and venal eunuchs. Each story comes with commentary by the author, Zhang Yingyu, who expounds a moral lesson while also speaking as a connoisseur of the swindle. This volume contains annotated translations of just over half of the eighty-odd tales in Zhang's landmark work.

The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late Ming China. Each story comes with commentary by the author, who expounds a moral lesson while also speaking as a connoisseur of the swindle.

Rea Christopher G. :

Christopher Rea is associate professor of Modern Chinese Literature at the University of British Columbia. He is the translator of The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection (Columbia University Press, 2017) and the author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (University of California Press, 2015)Zhang Yingyu (fl. 1612–1617) lived during the Wanli period (1573–1620) of the Ming dynasty.

Christopher Rea is associate professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (2015), and the editor of several books, including Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays by Qian Zhongshu (Columbia, 2011).

Bruce Rusk is associate professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Critics and Commentators: The Book of Poems as Classic and Literature (2012).

Peter Hessler, author of Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West:
What’s the oldest scam in the book? Nobody knows, but at least we have the oldest book about scams in China. It’s calledThe Book of Swindles, and finally, after four hundred years, Rea and Rusk have presented us with a vivid and entertaining new translation of this classic. Even the chapter titles—‘Eating Human Fetuses to Fake Fasting’; ‘Swindling the Salt Commissioner While Disguised as Daoists’—are as priceless as anything else produced during the Ming dynasty.

Geremie R. Barmé, editor of An Educated Man is Not a Pot: On the University:
It has been said that the study of China is the study of humanity. In these elegantly translated stories of folly and foibles, we are offered a unique guide to early modern China, as well as insights into the human condition itself.

Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao:
In The Book of Swindles, Rea and Rusk give us hilarious and sobering proof that swindling isn't just a contemporary concern but has been around for centuries. We are treated to stories of porters cheating officials who cheat porters, of conniving Taoists and gullible officials, of lusty widows who provoke their husbands' death, and of debauched gentry who prey on poor locals. Yet many of these tales sound eerily familiar to today's world, and especially today's China. We are confronted with a widespread, ambient feeling of social mistrust in which people across the land feel that they are constantly being cheated. Besides giving insight into deep societal concerns, The Book of Swindles is a great read.