More Swindles from the Late Ming: Sex, Scams, and Sorcery(Translations from the Asian Classics)

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.

Table of Contents:
Translators’ Introduction Explanation of Images at the Heads of Chapters in The Book of Swindles Type 1: Misdirection and Theft Encountering the Village Head and Then Stealing a Teapot Taking Advantage of the Bustle in a Shop to Brazenly Steal a Bolt of Cloth Borrowing a Storefront to Steal Cloth A Fake Carpenter Fixes a Moneychanger’s Desk Drawer Type 3: Money Changing Swapping Fake Silver for a Pure Ingot Type 4: Misrepresentation Gulling People by Impersonating an Envoy from the Netherworld and Burning a Register Stealing Cloth by Pretending to Purchase It at an Alley Entrance Type 5: False Relations Incitement to Drinking and Whoring Ruins Health and Reputation Debts Accumulated Against a Friend’s Property Bankrupt a Family Spurring a Friend to Launch a Fornication Suit to Ruin a Family Type 7: Enticement to Gambling Posing as a Wealthy Scion and Enlisting a Prostitute in a Gambling Scam A Gambling Addict Falls Prey to an Ingenious Trick Type 9: Scheming for Wealth Sedan Bearers Take a Confucian Apprentice off the Beaten Path Jacking Up the Price of Goods Only to End Up Ruined Type 10: Robbery A Fake Scion Rents Rooms and Robs a Widow Highway Robbery at a Shop in the Capital Type 11: Violence Acquiring a Bedroll by Marking It in Secret Stealing Silver by Throwing Lime in the Eyes Robbed by Crooks in Broad Daylight While Taking a Dump Type 12: On Boats Luggage Aboard a Boat Disappears, Along with a Servant A New Concubine Is Kidnapped from a Boat at Night A Purchase of Copperware Incites Boatmen to Murder Loading Cargo Onto the Wrong Boat Type 14: Fake Silver Passing Whitewashed Ingots in Maozhou Type 15: Government Underlings A Trumped-Up Death Sentence Is Commuted to Exile Type 16: Marriage Matchmakers Defraud a Provincial Graduate Seeking to Marry a Lady of Rank A Marriage Scam of Passion Comes to Light Because of a Frog Type 17: Illicit Passion Money and Guile Buy a Paper Maker’s Wife A Monk Seduces a Tenant Farmer’s Wife with a Length of Silk Robbed of Silver After Fornicating with a Maidservant Fleeced After an Affair with a Broker’s Daughter Type 18: Women A Man Rapes His Daughter-in-Law and Then Tricks Her Mother Into Sex A Tenant Farmer’s Wife Is Prostituted to Steal the Master’s Land Type 19: Kidnapping A Gang Blinds and Amputates Children, Leaving Them Maimed Type 21: Monks and Priests Believing a Deceitful Monk Leads to a Chain of Calamities A Buddhist Monk Impersonates a Guardian Deity to Scam a Donation Scamming a Silk Robe with Feigned Foresight Type 22: Alchemy An Alchemist in a Pit Uses Talismans to Escape Type 23: Sorcery Magic Reflections in Water Incite a Rebellion A Villain Kidnaps Boys by Touching Their Face Appendix: Story Finding List Bibliography

About the Author :
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).

Review :
Like every society characterized by long-distance trade, early modern China presented ample opportunities for deceit, and so had to confront endemic challenges to interpersonal trust. This book provides an extraordinary array of morality tales from the early seventeenth century, probing the variety of duplicitous schemes bedeviling Ming China and illuminating key frictions in a patriarchal, commercial society. The collection further illustrates the enduring dilemmas associated with efforts to instruct readers in how to look sharp in a world of sharpers, since its stories also serve as how-to guides for the unscrupulous. In the canon of the con, More Swindles from the Late Ming is an honest-to-goodness treasure—without a trace of honesty or goodness. Rusk and Rea have succeeded brilliantly with this translation, unearthing and explaining the roots of deep moral anxieties in China. Like the greatest crime stories, these harrowing tales read like sociology in disguise, reminding us how much of our daily life rests on a thin foundation of trust—if we can keep it. 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; e.g. “It’s simply safer to marry local.” It is wonderful to now have the lively and complete translation of this curious text. Rusk and Rea have done an admirable job of producing a readily accessible window into late-Ming society, in all its moral anxieties and perceived failings. With the appropriate interventions, it would make for an excellent teaching resource. There are fools, the gullible, and the vulnerable in all places and at all times, and that there are always the greedy, the envious, and the malicious who would take advantage of them. To borrow further lessons from different times and cultures, “What fools these mortals be!” and “There is no new thing under the sun.” But as a view into the seamy sides of late Ming society, these volumes are invaluable. Wars may be won and lost, and social apathy may grow to a staggering degree, but there is always a story to be built of our collapse. And if one is lucky, the stories, like Zhang’s, can contain an abundance of humor—tart and biting but satisfying nonetheless.