Background and themes

The first edition of 1617 has the full title A New Book for Foiling Swindlers, Based on Worldly Experience (Jianghu lilan dupian xinshu), suggesting that it is a guide to avoiding swindles and to negotiating the risky world of the traveling merchant, a life that an increasing number of people were leading in the growing commercial economy of the late Ming. It can just as well, however, be read as a guide to carrying out such scams oneself.

Types of swindle

The Book of Swindles is divided into twenty-four categories of swindle:

Author

Zhang Yingyu, style name Kui Zhong (夔衷), is an obscure figure. The Book of Swindles is the only known work to appear under his name, and no other records of him are known. A note on the title page of one Ming dynasty copy claims that he was from Zhejiang province, while a 1617 preface says that he was from Fujian.

Relationship with other literary works and genres

The Book of Swindles incorporates elements from a variety of other Chinese genres, especially court case (gong'an) fiction, in which a capable magistrate solves a crime. Stories involving sorcerers, Buddhist monks, and Daoist priests, who engage in alchemy or dream spirit possession, include motifs from supernatural tales. Other stories, featuring suspense, surprise and revelation, resemble jokes in structure. A minority include apocryphal anecdotes about historical figures.

Other works of fiction from the same time period, such as stories by Feng Menglong (1574–1645), Ling Mengchu (1580–1644), and Li Yu (1610–80), as well as novels such as The Water Margin (Shui hu zhuan) and Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin ping mei), feature accounts of similar scenarios of deception and trickery. Collections of swindle stories can also be found in contemporary China.