Judge Bao fiction

Judge Bao (or Justice Bao (包青天)) stories in literature and performing arts are some of the most popular in traditional Chinese crime fiction (gong'an fiction). All stories involve the Song dynasty minister Bao Zheng who solves, judges and sentences criminal cases.

In the Yuan Dynasty, many plays (in the forms of qu and zaju) have featured Bao Zheng as the central character. These plays include:

In 1594, the Yupan tang (與畔堂) bookstore owner An Yushi (安遇時) published the first Judge Bao-themed short story collection Cases of A Hundred Families Judged by Dragon-Design Bao (包龍圖判百家公案).

Judge Bao stories in other collections include:

In 2010, the scholar Wilt Idema published an annotated translation of eight ballad-stories (chantefable) from a late Ming dynasty collection printed in Beijing in the late Ming and which had recently been found in a tomb.

All of these cases have been favorites in Chinese opera.

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