The Book of Swindles

Selections from a Late Ming Collection

Yingyu Zhang, Christopher G. Rea, Bruce Rusk

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780231545648
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

This is an age of deception. Con men ply the roadways. Bogus alchemists pretend to turn one piece of silver into three. Devious nuns entice young women into adultery. Sorcerers use charmed talismans for mind control and murder. A pair of dubious monks extorts money from a powerful official and then spends it on whoring. A rich student tries to bribe the chief examiner, only to hand his money to an imposter. A eunuch kidnaps boys and consumes their "essence" in an attempt to regrow his penis. These are just a few of the entertaining and surprising tales to be found in this seventeenth-century work, said to be the earliest Chinese collection of swindle stories.

The Book of Swindles, compiled by an obscure writer from southern China, presents a fascinating tableau of criminal ingenuity. The flourishing economy of the late Ming period created overnight fortunes for merchants—and gave rise to a host of smooth operators, charlatans, forgers, and imposters seeking to siphon off some of the new wealth. The Book of Swindles, which was ostensibly written as a manual for self-protection in this shifting and unstable world, also offers an expert guide to the art of deception. 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, which contains annotated translations of just over half of the eighty-odd stories in Zhang's original collection, provides a wealth of detail on social life during the late Ming and offers words of warning for a world in peril.

Type 1

Misdirection and Theft

Stealing Silk with a Decoy Horse

Chen Qing, a man from Jiangxi province, often traveled to Nanjing to sell horses on Three Mountains Street, in front of the Temple of Granted Wishes.1

Once, when he had in his possession a fine silver-colored horse worth some forty ounces of silver, he was approached by a man who walked with a graceful gait, carried an expensive-looking umbrella, and was dressed in resplendent attire.2 This crook—for so he was—stopped in his tracks and stared at the horse as if he couldn’t tear himself away from it.

“How much would you part with that horse for?” he asked.

“Forty ounces of silver,” Chen replied.

“I’ll buy it,” the crook said, “but we’ll have to go to my house to draw up a contract and weigh out the silver.”

“Where do you live?”

“Hongwu Gate.”

With that, the crook mounted the silver horse and set off, with Chen riding another horse behind him. Halfway through their journey, the crook spotted a silk shop. He dismounted, put his umbrella down outside a nearby tavern, and told Chen: “Watch my things while I purchase a few bolts of silk. I’ll be back in a moment.”

This guy must be rich, Chen thought. He’ll be able to close the deal on the horse for sure.

The crook went into the shop and made a show of haggling. When the proprietor accused him of demanding an unreasonable price, the crook lied: “Allow me to show it to a colleague before I respond to your offer.”

“You’re welcome to show these fine goods to anyone you wish, just don’t go far.”

“My horse and man are right there. What are you worried about?”

Once he had the silk in hand, the crook slipped out the door and fled. Seeing that the horse and servant were still there, the proprietor was unconcerned. Chen waited until noon and, when the man still didn’t return, concluded that he must be a crook. Picking up the umbrella, he mounted the silver horse and started leading the other horse back to the stables.

The silk vendor ran over and stopped him. “Your partner took my silk. Where are you going?”

“What partner?”

“The man who rode here with you just now. Don’t play dumb. You’d better give me back my silk.”

“I have no idea what rock that fellow crawled out from under. All I know is that he said he wanted to buy my horse and was taking me to his house to get the money. That’s why we came here together. He told me he was going to buy some silk from your shop and we’d be on our way shortly. I’ve been waiting a long time and he hasn’t shown up, so I’m heading back to the stables. Don’t get me mixed up in this.”

“If he’s not your partner, then why were you watching his umbrella and his horse? I only let him take the silk because I saw you and the horses here. The two of you conspired to steal my silk!”

The two argued to an impasse and ended up bringing their dispute to the Prefect of Yingtian.3 First, the silk vendor gave his version of events. Chen then testified as follows: “I, Chen Qing, am originally from Jiangxi province, and I make my living as a horse trader. I often come to Three Mountains Street to sell horses at Weng Chun’s shop. I’ve never done anything crooked! I happened to meet a man who expressed interest in buying a horse, and I traveled with him because he had to go home to get money to complete the purchase. Along the way, he stopped and went into this man’s shop and then, unbeknownst to me, ran off with some silk. How does this make me a crook’s accomplice?”

“That will do,” the prefect said. “Bring the proprietor in for questioning and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

The proprietor, Weng Chun, testified: “Chen often comes here to sell horses and stays at my place. He’s an honest, law-abiding man.”

“If he’s so honest,” the silk vendor asked, “what was he doing guarding the umbrella and horse of a crook? I won’t believe him until I hear him explain that one.”

“I was just watching his umbrella because he was buying a horse from me. I wasn’t his accomplice.”

“Did the man take the umbrella when he left?” the prefect asked.

“No,” the silk vendor replied.

“He’s a crook all right,” said the prefect. “In order to steal your silk he feigned the purchase of a horse and used Chen Qing as security. Using someone else’s horse to acquire your silk is the ruse known as ‘obtaining passage through the state of Yu to attack the state of Guo.’4 You’re the one who fell for this scheme, so don’t blame Chen.”

Both were released with no restitution required.

It seems to me that even being a crook requires a lot of technique. This crook’s method for stealing the silk was to say that he was buying a horse while doing nothing of the sort, but instead using the horse as a decoy. This is why he was decked out in such finery in the first place: he wanted people to believe that he was a real millionaire. He stopped in his tracks and admired the horse to come across as a genuine buyer and maintained this pretense all the way to the silk shop. There, he lied about having a horse and an associate in order to convince the proprietor to trust him. As for making off with the silk, leaving his umbrella with Chen Qing, and getting Chen embroiled in a court case with the shop owner—these were all clever techniques to hoodwink the simple-minded. If it hadn’t been for the prefect’s discernment that this was a confidence scam of “attacking Guo through Yu,” it would have led to what the Book of Changes calls “the calamity of a townsman being punished when a passerby takes an ox.”5 Even so, Chen could not avoid getting caught up in a court case and the vendor was conned in broad daylight. These moral degenerates are extremely crafty, so the gentleman needs to make his defenses airtight.6 That way, however many tricks the common crook may have up his sleeve, you’ll never be played for a fool.

Notes

1. Three Mountains Street in Nanjing was also the location of many publishing houses.

2. An umbrella was part of the standard regalia of a traveling government official, though the story does not suggest that this crook was trying to impersonate one.

3. Yingtian prefecture housed the southern, secondary capital of Nanjing.

4. This idiom, which means to borrow an associate’s resources to attack one’s true target, derives from events that took place in 658 B.C.E.

5. Book of Changes, third line of hexagram #25 (Wuwang 無妄).

6. Zhang Yingyu politely implies here and in other comments that his readers belong to the class of junzi 君子, “gentlemen,” or people of cultural accomplishment and superior moral character.

Handing Over Silver Before Running Off with It

A man from Tongzhou named Su Guang dealt in fabric from Songjiang.1 He and his son were halfway home from a sales trip to Fujian province, earnings in hand, when they encountered a man named Ji Sheng who claimed to be from another county in their home prefecture. His dialect was identical to theirs, and he too was on his way back from selling cloth in Fujian. Ji Sheng was a greenhorn. Seeing that Su Guang was from a neighboring town and that his financial resources were greater, he entrusted Su with twenty-odd ounces of his silver to store in Su’s trunk. Su carefully carried it the whole way, with Ji’s silver alongside his own as if the two men were partners.

After several days of travel, Ji saw a chance for profit and hatched a treacherous scheme. One night at an inn he pretended to have diarrhea and got out of bed repeatedly, opening and closing the door as he went in and out of the room. Little did he know that Su was an old hand: seeing Ji going in and out again and again, he became suspicious that Ji had some scheme in the works. Moreover, thought Su, I’m not sure of his origins. While he does have twenty-odd ounces of silver stored in my trunk, tonight he seems to be up to no good. The next time Ji stepped out, Su secretly got up and hid both his money and Ji’s in a bundle of clothes, which he kept beside him in bed. He wrapped some bricks and stones in old clothing and placed these in the trunk. Then he feigned deep slumber.

Ji Sheng, seeing that Su Guang and his son had both fallen asleep, took the trunk and stole off into the night. Su lay in bed listening to Ji’s movements. When he heard him leave and not return he said to himself, Just as I thought—he was a crook. If he’d pulled this on anyone but me he’d have gotten away with it too.

The next day when Su got up he made a show of being shocked at the discovery that Ji had stolen his silver and began tussling with the innkeeper.

“Your accomplice stole my money!” he said accusingly.

Su’s son, unaware of his father’s scheme, began to beat the innkeeper furiously, stopping only when his father whispered, “Everything’s under control.”

After breakfast, Su told his son, “I’m going to the county office to report this. If they catch that crook I’ll need you to come along to testify; otherwise, they’re sure to suspect that you took it and start asking questions.” Su, certain that Ji would come back, had a plan of his own. They hurried homeward along back roads.

Ji, delighted at having stolen Su’s money, wandered until midday, traveling nearly a hundred li. When he opened the trunk and discovered the bricks, stones, and old clothes, he stamped his feet in disgust and traveled all the way back to the inn, where he was roundly beaten by the innkeeper.

“You thief! You stole someone’s money and got me involved too. You’ll be strangled for this!” the innkeeper cursed, as he prepared to turn Ji over to the authorities. All Ji could do was blurt out the truth and beg for mercy by knocking his head on the ground. By then Su was several days’ journey away—well out of reach. Ji was left to nurse his resentment.

Ji Sheng was no gre...