Who was Judge Bao? Bao Zheng in history and legend
Judge Bao was Bao Zheng (包拯, 999-1062), a real official of China’s Northern Song dynasty, remembered for refusing bribes and for standing up to powerful families while he governed the capital, Kaifeng. Over the next nine centuries, plays, ballads and novels turned him into Bao Qingtian, the incorruptible judge of Chinese legend.
Was Judge Bao a real person?
Yes. Bao Zheng was a scholar-official who served Emperor Renzong of the Song dynasty, and his biography is in the official History of Song (宋史, Song shi), chapter 316.
He came from Hefei, in Luzhou, and his courtesy name was Xiren (希仁). After passing the highest civil service examination he turned down his first posting so that he could look after his elderly parents, and he only took office some years after they died. His biography then follows a long career: county magistrate, prefect, censor, envoy to the Liao court, fiscal official, and finally Vice Commissioner of Military Affairs. He died in 1062 and was given the posthumous name Xiaosu (孝肅).
Two early stories in the biography show the reputation forming.
- The ox’s tongue. As magistrate of Tianchang, Bao heard from a farmer whose ox had had its tongue cut out. He told the man to go home, slaughter the ox and sell the meat. Soon someone came to accuse the farmer of killing an ox without permission. Bao asked him why he had cut out the tongue and then reported it, and the culprit confessed.
- The inkstones. Duanzhou was famous for its inkstones, and earlier prefects had collected many times the tribute quota to give to powerful patrons. Bao had only the quota made, and when his term ended he left without a single inkstone of his own.
What did Bao Zheng do as prefect of Kaifeng?
He made the capital’s court open to ordinary people and refused to protect the powerful, which is where most of his fame comes from.
Bao became acting prefect of Kaifeng in 1057. Under the old rules, people bringing a lawsuit could not go straight to the court hall. Bao opened the main gate so they could come forward and state their case to him, and the clerks could no longer cheat them. When palace eunuchs and great families built gardens and pavilions that blocked the Huimin River and the capital flooded, he had them all torn down.
The History of Song records what people said about him. The emperor’s in-laws and the palace eunuchs held back for fear of him. His smile was said to be as rare as the Yellow River running clear. Even children and women knew him as “Bao Daizhi,” after one of his titles. And the capital had a saying: “Bribes won’t get you through; there’s Old Bao, King Yama” (關節不到，有閻羅包老), comparing him to the judge of the underworld.
He set the same rule for his own family. Any descendant convicted of corruption, he wrote, must not return to the family home, and must not be buried in the family graveyard.
Why is Judge Bao called Bao Qingtian?
Qingtian (青天) means a clear blue sky, and “Bao Qingtian,” sometimes translated “Blue Sky Bao,” praises him as an official under whom injustice is cleared away like clouds.
The name is an honorific from popular tradition, earned for defending commoners against corrupt officials. It became the title of the best-known modern retelling, the Taiwanese television series Justice Bao (包青天, 1993).
How did the legend of Judge Bao grow?
Storytellers and playwrights kept adding cases, helpers and powers to the real man for centuries, until the legend outgrew the history.
Yuan dynasty plays
In the zaju plays of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), Bao is already the judge who solves the cases no one else can. In Li Qianfu’s The Chalk Circle (灰闌記), two women claim the same boy. Bao has the child placed in a chalk circle and tells each woman to pull him out. The real mother will not hurt him, and that is how Bao knows her. A German adaptation by Klabund in the 1920s led to Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944). Guan Hanqing, the best-known Yuan playwright, also wrote Judge Bao plays.
Ballad-stories and Ming case collections
Ballad-stories about Bao from about 1250 to 1450 show him enforcing the law even against the emperor’s in-laws and princes; Wilt Idema translated eight of them as Judge Bao and the Rule of Law. In the 16th century the case collection Bao Gong An (包公案) gathered dozens of short crime stories under his name and helped make him China’s model detective-judge.
The Three Heroes and Five Gallants
In the 19th century the storyteller Shi Yukun performed a long cycle that mixed Bao’s cases with martial heroes. It was printed in 1879 as The Tale of Loyal Heroes and Righteous Gallants, reissued in 1883 as The Three Heroes and Five Gallants (三俠五義), and revised in 1889 as The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants (七俠五義). This is where readers meet Zhan Zhao, the swordsman called the Southern Hero, whom the emperor nicknames the Imperial Cat. The novel is one of the ancestors of the modern wuxia story (see wuxia vs xianxia).
| History (Song shi) | Legend (plays, novels, television) | |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Career official; prefect of Kaifeng in 1057 | Permanent judge of Kaifeng who hears every great case |
| Famous for | Refusing bribes, opening the court to commoners, checking powerful families | Solving impossible crimes and punishing royalty |
| Helpers | None named in the biography | The swordsman Zhan Zhao, the adviser Gongsun Ce and a squad of constables |
| Face | No description | Black face with a white crescent moon on the forehead |
| Weapons | None | Three guillotines with dragon, tiger and dog heads |
What are Judge Bao’s three guillotines?
They are a feature of the legend, not of history: three lever-blades, each with a carved head that shows whom it is for.
In the stories, the dog’s head blade is for commoners, the tiger’s head for officials, and the dragon’s head for members of the imperial family. The dragon blade matters most: it means no one is above Bao’s court, the same idea the ballad-stories and plays keep returning to. In Chinese opera he is also given a black face and a white crescent moon on his forehead, the look most people now picture when they hear his name.
Questions about Judge Bao
- Was Judge Bao a real person?
- Yes. Bao Zheng (999-1062) was an official of the Northern Song dynasty who served Emperor Renzong. His biography is in the official History of Song, chapter 316. The many cases told about him in plays and novels are mostly later inventions.
- What does Bao Qingtian mean?
- Qingtian means a clear blue sky. Bao Qingtian, sometimes translated Blue Sky Bao, is a popular honorific praising him as an official who clears away injustice. It is also the Chinese title of the 1993 television series Justice Bao.
- Did Judge Bao really have three guillotines?
- No. The dog, tiger and dragon head guillotines come from later stories and opera. The History of Song says nothing about them. They stand for the idea that his court punished commoners, officials and royalty alike.
- Who is Zhan Zhao?
- Zhan Zhao is a fictional swordsman who serves Judge Bao in the 19th-century novel The Three Heroes and Five Gallants, based on the storyteller Shi Yukun's performances. He is called the Southern Hero, and the emperor gives him the nickname Imperial Cat.
- Why does Judge Bao have a black face?
- The black face and the white crescent moon on his forehead belong to his look in Chinese opera and later retellings. The History of Song does not describe his appearance.
- Where is Judge Bao buried?
- In Hefei, his home city in Anhui province. He was buried there in 1063. The tomb that visitors see today, next to a memorial temple to him, was rebuilt in the 1980s.
Read it as a story
Comicwell’s Judge Bao is a romantic legal thriller set in a modern city, and it borrows the legend’s nickname. Investigator Zach Zane needs one thing from outlaw hacker Bianca Yates: a way into a contractor portal before another witness dies. In the opening chapters, Director Bennett Bao refuses a contractor’s cash envelope on a live camera, and the city starts calling him Blue Sky Bao. His new Public Integrity Unit follows a trail of bribes from a crooked fixer to a police commander and finally to Simon Chen, a mayoral candidate protected by a powerful family. The first 20 comic chapters are free.
More legends: Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, wuxia novels in English and Chinese ghost stories. All guides: Chinese legends explained.
Sources
- Song shi (History of Song), chapter 316, biography of Bao Zheng, Chinese text: zh.wikisource.org/wiki/宋史/卷316
- Wilt L. Idema, trans., Judge Bao and the Rule of Law: Eight Ballad-Stories from the Period 1250-1450 (World Scientific, 2010), ISBN 9789814277013: books.google.com
- Wikipedia (pointers): Bao Zheng, The Chalk Circle, The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, Zhan Zhao, Justice Bao (1993 TV series)