While Rome was under the Severans strained,
the Han Dynasty in China fell apart.
The eunuchs fought the Confucian scholars.
The Yellow Turbans rose with fervent heart.
Zhang Jue and his brothers led
the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184.
Taiping Dao, the Way of Great Peace,
promised a new heaven, a new core.
Zhang Jue claimed healing powers, faith
cures, magical ceremonies, bean counting.
When plague and famine struck the peasants,
his followers numbered hundreds of thousands mounting.
The Han court raised armies, crushed the revolt,
but the generals became too strong thereby.
Dong Zhuo marched into the capital,
controlled the boy emperor, made him cry.
Dong Zhuo was assassinated. The warlords
carved up China like meat on the bone.
Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan emerged
as the three great regional powers alone.
Cao Cao held the north, controlled the emperor,
ruled through the Han name though he was king.
Liu Bei claimed descent from Han imperial blood,
built his base in Shu, the southwestern ring.
Sun Quan inherited the south from his father and brother,
built his power along the Yangtze's mouth,
Wu the eastern kingdom along the coast.
Three Kingdoms: Wei, Shu, Wu, facing drouth.
In two-twenty, Cao Cao's son Cao Pi
forced the last Han emperor to abdicate.
The Han was formally dead. Cao Pi
declared Wei dynasty at its birth date.
Liu Bei declared Shu Han in response.
Sun Quan declared Wu a few years later.
The Three Kingdoms period had begun,
lasting sixty years, never quieter.
The Han had lasted four hundred years.
Its fall was the end of classical Chinese order.
What followed was three centuries of division,
three centuries of warfare on every border.
The Three Kingdoms, then Jin unification briefly,
then the Sixteen Kingdoms in the north,
then the Southern and Northern Dynasties period,
three hundred years of China torn forth.
During this time, Buddhism took deep root.
With Confucian order failing, people turned
to the foreign teaching that addressed suffering.
Monasteries multiplied, sutras were earned.
Kumarajiva was brought from Kucha as hostage
to Chang'an where he translated sutras,
the Lotus, the Diamond, the Vimalakirti,
setting the standard for Chinese Buddhist tutors.
Daoism also consolidated in this period
into an organized religion with clergy,
temples, canon, and liturgies modeled
on Buddhist forms they found analogously.
The Celestial Masters had emerged
in the late Han as an organized church.
Ge Hong's alchemy sought immortality.
Daoism became institutional perch.
China would not be reunified until
Sui Wendi in five-eighty-nine.
And then the Tang Dynasty would build
on that foundation the greatest era fine.
But first, the Three Kingdoms would become
the great subject of Chinese historical imagination.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel
would make these warlords into every nation's creation.
Cao Cao: the cunning, ruthless antihero.
Liu Bei: the virtuous, righteous claimant.
Zhuge Liang: the brilliant strategist advisor.
Guan Yu: the loyal sworn brother, servant of heaven's pavement.
Their stories would shape Chinese culture
for fifteen centuries to come,
like the Mahabharata for India,
like the Iliad for classical Greek home.
Stand.