People/Characters Judge Dee

Judge Dee, or Judge Di, is a semi-fictional character based on the historical figure Di Renjie, county magistrate and statesman of the Tang court. The character appeared in the 18th-century Chinese detective and gong'an crime novel Di Gong An. After Robert van Gulik came across it in an antiquarian book store in Tokyo, he translated the novel into English and then used the style and characters to write his own original Judge Dee historical mystery stories.

The series is set in Tang Dynasty China and deals with criminal cases solved by the upright and shrewd Judge Dee, who as county magistrate in the Chinese imperial legal system was both the investigating magistrate and judge.

The character has since been used in adaptations of the original, such as the play The Ingenious Judge Dee by Hock Guan Tjoa, the 2010 Tsui Hark movie Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, of van Gulik's works, and also developed by other authors such as Eleanor Cooney & Daniel Altieri, Zhu Xiao Di, Frédéric Lenormand, Sven Roussel, and Qiu Xiaolong, in a variety of languages.
Wikipedia

Di Renjie (630 – November 11, 700), courtesy name Huaiying (懷英), formally Duke Wenhui of Liang (梁文惠公), was a Chinese politician of Tang and Wu Zhou dynasties, twice serving as chancellor during the reign of Wu Zetian. He was one of the most celebrated officials of Wu Zetian's reign. Di Renjie is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.
Wikipedia