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I was listening to the latest Sinica podcast, "All sorts of swindles in the late Ming society, with Christopher Rea and Bruce Rusk."

At about 33:55 Christopher Rea talks about an edition of《杜骗新书》or《江湖奇闻杜骗新书》with 白话 and modern day parallels.

I found a version on weipan it seems to contain 白话 translations but I'm not seeing any modern day parallels.

Any idea which version he's talking about?

Mou某
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1 Answers1

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《江湖奇闻杜骗新书》(lit. Weird Things in the World: New Collection of Frauds) is written in a mixture of Classical and Vulgar Chinese. The Vulgar Chinese lately evolved into Modern Chinese in early 1920s (as the Government of ROC abolished all Classical Chinese textbooks in schools in 1922). Therefore, for a Chinese speaker above high school level, it is not a challenge reading this book. I guess that you can't find a Modern Chinese version because the book is written in a language that most Chinese people can loosely understand, if not completely, thus translation into Modern Chinese is not needed.

Aurus Huang
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