More Swindles from the Late Ming - An Interview with the Translators

The Chinese History Podcast

More Swindles from the Late Ming is the companion piece to the Book of Swindles, a translation of a Late Ming text by Zhang Yingyu (fl. 1612–1617) which details various types of scams and swindles and how to guard against them. More Swindles from the Late Ming "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." Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea, the translators, joins us to talk about these two books and their experience with the translatino.

More information on More Swindles from the Late Ming available on the publisher's website here.

Contributors:

Bruce Rusk

Bruce Rusk is an Associate Professor of Pre-modern and Early Modern China in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His main areas of research and teaching are the cultural history of China, especially the Ming (1368–1644) through mid-Qing (1644–1911) periods. Additionally, he also works on the history of textual studies, literary culture, writing systems, and connoisseurship. He has published widely and was the past present of the Society for Ming Studies.

Christopher Rea

Christopher Rea is a Professor of Modern Chinese Literature in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the modern Chinese-speaking world and his recent publications concern research methodology, cinema, comedy, celebrities, swindlers, cultural entrepreneurs, and the scholar-writers Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang. He has published several books and numerous articles, and also hosts a free online course on Chinese novels.

Yiming Ha

Yiming Ha is the Rand Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies at Pomona College. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA, his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his PhD from UCLA. He is also the book review editor for Ming Studies.

Credits:

Episode no. 21

Release date: March 1, 2025

Recording date: January 9, 2025

Recording location: Vancouver, Canada/Los Angeles, CA