Beginner’s guide to a Chinese classic: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
This article contains spoilers.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is among the most widely-read and influential novels in the world, bringing together centuries of accumulated folk tales and popular elaborations relating to the Three Kingdoms period in ancient China (220–280 AD). The amalgamated version we read today is usually attributed to the fourteenth-century playwright Lo Kuan-Chung. Later editions added to this work, however, and by the seventeenth century the most widely-circulated version had acquired the immortal opening line: ‘Empires wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce.’
Partly because the book relates to such a universal phenomenon, it continues to capture imaginations on a global scale. Chinese and Japanese culture has drawn heavily on the Three Kingdoms in poetry, artwork, theater, literature, and politics. In China, the novel has been adapted into multiple serialized television programs, as well as a string of blockbuster films, while in Japan and the West it has inspired a number of popular video games.
For the casual reader, however, the book can present a bewildering challenge. The most popular English edition tops out at 1,360 pages, despite being heavily abridged. Following all the countless narrative threads from start to finish requires multiple readings, especially as some of them seem insignificant at first. The reader is also given a dizzying list of names to memorize, including geographical locations and, for individuals, as many as three different names which may be used interchangeably. The writing style is not what most Western readers will be accustomed to: for example, detailed descriptive passages are used sparingly, and much of the scenery is not described at all. It is a shame for this remarkable story to go under-appreciated for such superficial reasons, but it does require some demystification. So what, exactly, is the book all about, and why does it still matter so much?
Until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China was ruled by a millennia-long succession of imperial families. The history of the country is usually split into chunks named after the dynasty ruling at the time, such as the Zhou (1050–256 BC), the Han (206 BC-220 AD), and the Tang (618–906 AD). Each dynasty ascended to power after a period of upheaval and civil war, and ended in the same fashion after descending into weakness, corruption, and inefficiency. This process gave rise to a sense of inevitability and a feeling that all regimes have a limited lifespan — hence the inclusion of the line ‘Empires wax and wane’ in the edition that was circulated shortly after the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD).
The events of Romance of the Three Kingdoms take place during and after the demise the Han dynasty, which succeeded the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) and before that the Zhou. The influence of Confucianism, a deeply hierarchical, patriarchal, and ritualized philosophy of social order formulated in the time of the late Zhou dynasty, can be felt throughout the Romance. Women, for instance, only become key actors when they are used as pawns to seduce enemies and destabilize states, or when they attempt to meddle in politics and thereby doom their own cause. All leading characters, meanwhile, have a strictly hierarchical view of the world. Nowhere are this themes more visible than in the opening chapters.
Readers are presented with a Han state that, through decades of misrule, has fallen into chaos. Instead of listening to learned advisers, recent emperors have let power fall into the hands of a group of eunuchs, leading the Heavens to inflict natural disasters and supernatural events upon China, and a visitation by a ‘monstrous black serpent’ upon the emperor.
We hear from one of the emperor’s ministers, who informs him that the recent happenings were ‘brought about by feminine interference in State affairs’. The social order has been neglected, leading to a general decay in the moral standing of state and country. Into this power vacuum comes a popular rebellion inspired by a mystical movement: the Yellow Turbans. The causes, composition, and objectives of the rebellion are left unexplored, and for the authors these details are inconsequential anyway — it merely serves as a narrative tool to demonstrate the extent of government weakness and set the scene for the introduction of the tale’s central heroes.
The Han government puts out a call to arms to defeat the Yellow turbans, and among those to answer the call is Liu Bei, a shoemaker who claims descent from the Han royal line and, together with his sworn warrior-brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, goes on to found the Shu-Han state in south-western China — one of the Three Kingdoms. Liu Bei is the character with whom the authors seem to sympathize most, being portrayed as a just ruler who surrounds himself with able advisers and noble warriors.
Another to answer the call was Ts’ao Ts’ao, later the founder of the kingdom of Wei in northern China and an altogether more ruthless, cunning, and suspicious character. Although he takes on a villainous aura at times, his state would prove to be the base from which a new dynasty was ultimately founded.
The Yellow Turban rebellion is successfully defeated by this coalition, and the eunuchs too are deposed from their over-powerful position in the royal court. Into the power vacuum, however, comes another menace, Dong Zhuo — gluttonous, cruel, barbaric — who seizes possession of the young emperor Xian and therefore the levers of power. Another coalition of regional warlords, including Liu Bei and Ts’ao Ts’ao, is formed to challenge Dong, and at this point we meet the family behind the third of the Three Kingdoms — Sun Jian and his sons, Ce and Quan. Their kingdom would be called Wu, based south of the Yangtze river.
The coalition against Dong eventually breaks apart and fails, and he is instead killed by his own general when members of his court hatch a plot to involve the two of them in a love triangle. With Dong gone, China once again descends into a violent power-struggle. The list of petty regional lords and pretenders to the throne is gradually whittled down until there remains a triumvirate of challengers — Liu Bei’s Shu-Han, Ts’ao Ts’ao’s Wei, and Wu under the Sun family. What follows is an epic, winding tale of political and military intrigue, plots, assassinations, battles of wit, moral dilemmas, and an ever-changing web of alliances and loyalties. Each kingdom has its moments of triumph and disaster, and their rulers all declare themselves to be the sole legitimate emperor.
There are four key moments that define the direction of the story following the founding of the Three Kingdoms. The first is the Battle of Red Cliffs (208 AD), fought on the Yangtze river between a Shu-Wu alliance and the vastly more numerous invading forces of Ts’ao Ts’ao. Liu Bei’s strategist, the legendary Zhuge Liang, prays for a favorable wind, enabling the allies to launch a daring fire attack and burn the Wei navy. This victory halts Ts’ao’s momentum, but Shu and Wu eventually fall out over territorial disputes, and one of Sun Quan’s generals later kills Liu Bei’s beloved brother, Guan Yu.
Liu’s rage at the death of his brother prompts him, against the advice of his followers, to invade Wu. The result, the Battle of Xiaoting (222 AD), is the second key turning point in the story. Wu’s forces again deploy fire tactics to destroy the invading army, and the defeated Liu retreats to coalesce and focus his efforts against the more expansive kingdom of Wei.
From 228 to 234 AD, the Shu strategist Zhuge Liang leads a series of northern expeditions against Wei, and these campaigns comprise the third turning point. Although Zhuge uses his superhuman strategic abilities to achieve some remarkable results on the battlefield, none of his expeditions inflict a decisive blow, partly because Wei had by this time found its own talismanic strategist in Sima Yi. A long rivalry ensues between these two great minds, and while Zhuge is portrayed as slightly superior, he is always foiled at the last moment by natural causes or by political failures in Shu following the death of Liu Bei. Zhuge’s own demise then removes the greatest external threat to Wei’s dominance.
Another key player to have passed away by this point is Ts’ao Ts’ao. Like the Han state before it, the kingdom of Wei was now in the hands of far less capable figures than its founder, leaving the way clear for the final key moment in the tale: Sima Yi’s coup against Ts’ao Shuang and his seizure of power in Wei (249 AD). Sima’s descendants go on to conquer Shu-Han (263 AD), declare their own dynasty (the Jin, 266–420 AD), and finally conquer Wu (280 AD).
And so it was that none of the Three Kingdoms survived to unify China. All of them became microcosms of the dysfunction and decay that afflicted the late Han, and they suffered the same end. This is the great irony of the Romance, but it also helps to explain the enduring popularity of this tale, for it concerns not just the fortunes of states but something much more intimate — the apparent powerlessness of human effort when stacked against the will of the Heavens and the crushing inevitability of fate. As the book’s concluding poem states:
All down the ages rings the note of change,
For fate so rules it; none escape its sway.
The kingdoms three have vanished as a dream,
The useless misery is ours to grieve.
