The Cases of Judge Bao

In the courts of Song dynasty China, one magistrate's name became synonymous with justice itself - and a thousand years later, it still is.

The Cases of Judge Bao (包公案) is the foundational masterpiece of Chinese gong'an (court-case) fiction, a Ming dynasty compilation of one hundred mysteries built around the legendary Bao Zheng (999–1062) - the incorruptible "Black-Faced Judge" whose fearless defiance of corruption made him the most beloved symbol of justice in Chinese history. So enduring was his fame that when Sherlock Holmes was first introduced to Chinese readers in the late Qing dynasty, translators reached for the only comparison their audience would instantly understand: they called him "the English Judge Bao."

This edition presents all one hundred cases in modern, readable English, preserving the rhythm, wit, and moral weight of the original while making the text effortlessly accessible to contemporary readers. Murders, frauds, conspiracies, supernatural reckonings, ghosts seeking justice from beyond the grave, clever criminals undone by a single overlooked detail - each case is a self-contained story, ideal for a single sitting or an extended immersion in the world that gave birth to detective fiction in East Asia.

Alongside The Cases of Judge Dee, The Cases of Judge Hai, The Cases of Magistrate Shi, and The Cases of Judge Peng, this collection stands as one of the five great pillars of the gong'an tradition - and arguably its cornerstone, since it was Judge Bao who first defined the archetype of the brilliant, incorruptible magistrate that all the others would follow.

Meet the original detective heroes of Chinese literature. Long before modern crime fiction, China’s gong’an novels followed brilliant magistrates who solved impossible cases, exposed corruption and delivered justice to the powerless.