Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Brief: This book is one of “Four Great Classical Novels” of Chinese literature; it is the first river novel writes by chapters in China . It is a Chinese historical novel based upon events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era of China, starting in 169 and ending with the reunification of the land in 280. The whole book has 120 chapters, and a total of 800,000 words and 1,798 dramatic characters and nearly 40 battles. The story begins with the end of Eastern Han Dynasty.

The government becomes extremely corrupt on all levels, leading to widespread deterioration of the empire. During the reign of the penultimate Han emperor, Emperor Ling, the Yellow Turban Rebellion breaks out under the leadership of Zhang Jiao; And finishes with the early Western Jin Dynasty, the three regimes return to a unified national. During those 100 years, there were many conflicts among the various warlords and nobles, then the three kingdoms were appeared on the stage of the history, we cal l them ——Cao Wei (Cao Cao), Shu Han (Liu Bei, Zhuge liang), Eastern Wu (Sun Quan).

This book focuses on describing the three countries competing for the land, people, people in the process, there are many scenes of great wars, and ups and downs in the story as if it can help people back to thousands of years ago where a bloody battlefield, to give readers a thrilling sense of deep. The wits of the strategy of heroes in the book is very fascinating, whether it is good ideas, or intrigue, all of them are make readers feel the great wisdom and wonderful imagination of our ancient.

There are many main characters in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, however the main focus is on the hero, Liu Bei(Shu Han), who is a distant relative of the reigning family. The story opens up with the decline of the Han Dynasty, the ruling dynasty of all of China for the past 400 years. As the royal throne begins to crumble and lose power, a rebellious cult arises that brings together wonderful and terrible generals to fight off the rebellious menace. This sets the stage for the heroes of the Han army to make a name for them and to gain power.

As the story unfolds over many, many chapters, the throne eventually loses all power and is basically controlled by one of its ministers, a former hero of the rebellions, Cao Cao. He ends up being the villain of the story as he forms the Wei kingdom that manipulates the throne and the Emperor for personal gain. In fact,the 70% of the story is real history, and the other 30% is besides unofficial historical records, folk stories and Sanguozhi Pinghua(another historical book about Three Kingdoms), some were created by the author on his own.

So I want to show you two differences between the stories of the real history. Hua Rong Dao(a name of place) Story In the book, it described that Guan Yu intercepted Cao Cao on the Hua Rong Dao after Cao Cao loss the Chi Bi War. And at that time, Guan Yu had very high chance to kill Cao Cao. If that, it won`t happen the situation that there are three countries. But Guan Yu remembered out some past and liberated Cao Cao finally. He lost the chance. But in the reality, the person who went to intercept Cao Cao is not Guan Yu.

While it`s Liu Bei. And it`s too late when Liu Bei got there. So Cao Cao run away. This story is mainly in order to play down Cao Cao and set up the perfect image of Guan Yu. Zhou Yu Story In the book, Zhuge Liang angered Zhou Yu three times and Zhuge Liang died finally. In the reality, Zhou Yu is smarter than Zhuge Liang. For example, the strategy of Chi Bi is thought out from Zhou Yu, not Zhuge Liang. At that time, Zhou Yu even didn’t pay attention to Zhuge Liang. They have less chance to meet each other.

From Chi Bi War to two years after Zhou Yu’s death, Zhuge Liang were doing the logistics and had no chance to see Zhou Yu. Even in the memorial meeting, the representative of Shu Country is Pang Tong, not Zhuge Liang. The course of death of Zhou Yu is overwork. The preferred country of author is Shu country. And the most preferable people of author is Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang. So at here, the author played down Zhou Yu and enhances the image of Zhuge Liang. When I was a middle school student, my father asked me to read this book, but it was hardship and boring for me, I just read it without thinking.

But now I like it better with age, I love Cao Cao’s cunning, Guan Yu’s loyalty, Zhuge Liang’s extremely intelligent; I love Lu Bu’s single-minded, I love Zhao Yun’s brave, Zhang Fei’s impulse. All of them are vivid and interesting. I think the biggest advantage of this book is that everybody can learn something from it. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms,there are a lot of knowledge about military science, psychology, science of resourcefulness, public relations, science of personnel and so on. The schemers of the three kingdoms use various sorts and varieties of knowledge to help their lord to win the wars and earn the lands.

And by reading this book, I realized that a lot of truth in life, for example, in this book the author always stressed a sentence: ‘This world will separate after long time united. Also it will do the opposite after long time of plighting. ’ This sentence has been verified many times in Chinese history after that. And in China, we have many Chinese proverbs in use today are derived from the novel, like “Three reeking tanners (are enough to) overcome one Zhuge Liang. ” The meaning is three inferior people can overpower a superior person when they combine their strength.

Because Zhuge Liang was very smart, but if we can make us unity, we can overcome Zhuge Liang. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is definitely a challenging book, but is really a hidden treasure as most people who interested in Eastern culture. Mainly being a popular book in the Asian countries, it is a great book for those that enjoy historical fiction books with a twist of fantasy or for those that enjoy war/strategy novels. This is a great book and is highly recommended for anyone looking for something different to read.