High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Judge Dee (also, Judge Di) is a semi-fictional character based on the historical figure Di Renjie , magistrate and statesman of the Tang court. The character first appeared in the 18th century Chinese detective novel Di Gong An. After Robert van Gulik came across it in a second-hand book store in Tokyo, he translated the novel into English and then used the style and characters to write his original Judge Dee stories.