But it isn’t just western audiences who have found true crime to be a copious source of perverse entertainment. In Ming Dynasty China, where crime and courtroom fiction were all the rage, one volume says this better than most: “The Book of Swindles,” published by author Zhang Yingyu in 1617.
As noted by Columbia University Press, Zhang’s book was released during a time of bustling mercantile expansion in China, and while this new wealthy middle class was enjoying great wealth, it also meant that they were ripe targets for con artists, thieves, and tricksters looking to separate them from their new money. The volume, then, offers dozens of individual crime stories that seek to educate readers about contemporary fraud tactics, but also read as titillating true crime tales at the same time.
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Though modern readers typically approach Zhang’s most famous work as a collection of short fiction, the Association for Asian Studies notes that stories shared therein were at least only “semi-fictional.” It was a compilation of rumors the author had heard on his travels of seemingly real-world crimes, and he believed his contemporary travelers — many of whom were a new generation of traveling businesspeople — should be aware of them. As with modern true crime, many turned to Zhang’s work for instruction on how to avoid becoming unwitting victims of swindles themselves.
