The novel by Luo Guanzhong
in the fourteenth century brought alive
the Three Kingdoms war with such vividness
that fact and fiction no longer survive
as separate things. What "everyone knows"
about this period comes from his book.
The historical Chen Shou's Records of Three Kingdoms
is less read, less fun, less took.
The opening line: "The empire, long divided,
must unite; long united, must divide.
Thus it has ever been." The novel begins
with the Peach Garden Oath on a riverside.
Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei
swore brotherhood in a peach garden,
pledging to die on the same day, to
restore the Han, to share every burden.
Liu Bei claimed descent from the Han imperial line,
but sold straw sandals and mats to live.
Guan Yu was a fugitive for avenging
a local bully who would not forgive.
Zhang Fei was a butcher and wine-seller,
brash, brave, violent, loyal as stone.
Together they raised a volunteer army
against the Yellow Turbans on their own.
Zhuge Liang joined Liu Bei later,
the Sleeping Dragon, the brilliant strategist,
visited three times at his thatched cottage
before he would consent to be a lobbyist
for Liu Bei's cause. He devised the strategy
of the tripod: three kingdoms balancing,
Shu allied with Wu against Wei,
the weaker two against the one advancing.
The Battle of Red Cliffs in two-oh-eight
was the great set piece. Cao Cao's northern army
came south to crush the Wu-Shu alliance.
Eight hundred thousand troops, allegedly.
Zhuge Liang borrowed arrows with straw boats
in the fog, ten thousand arrows from Cao Cao's
own archers fired at what they couldn't see.
Fire ships were prepared, east wind-blowings owed.
The Taoist Zhuge summoned the east wind,
or predicted it, the novel is ambiguous.
The fire ships slipped into Cao Cao's fleet
chained together, and the conflagration was continuous.
Cao Cao's navy burned. His army fled
along the Huarong Road through marsh and mud.
Guan Yu let him escape at the narrow pass,
repaying old debt of favor, blood.
(This was not in the histories. Luo Guanzhong
invented the Huarong Road release
to show Guan Yu's righteousness, his sense
of honor even to foes, sense of peace.)
Guan Yu became the god of war,
of loyalty, of brotherhood, of merchants,
worshipped across China and Chinese diaspora
as Guandi, in temples of gold and servants.
Zhuge Liang's Six Campaigns against Wei
ended in his death at Wuzhang Plains.
"The heavens will not let me succeed,"
he said. Shu collapsed from his absent pains.
Shu fell to Wei in two-sixty-three.
Wei was replaced by the Jin Dynasty in two-sixty-five.
Wu fell to Jin in two-eighty.
The empire was briefly reunified alive.
But Jin would not last. Barbarian invasions
from the north would push the Jin south,
the Northern and Southern Dynasties would begin.
China would be divided with famine in its mouth.
Yet the Three Kingdoms tales endured.
Liu Bei as the righteous rightful heir.
Cao Cao as the cunning realist.
Zhuge Liang as wisdom incarnate there.
The novel's influence is vast.
Every Chinese child knows these names.
East Asian games, operas, films retell them.
Military strategy manuals cite their games.
"Hard as it is to conquer the world,
harder it is to keep what's conquered."
"Victory and defeat are common in war,
but the determined man's not deflowered."
The novel's worldview is deeply Confucian:
loyalty above survival, righteousness above success.
Liu Bei's cause is just though it loses.
Cao Cao's victory is tainted, a mess.
The deflationary polytheist sees here
the Chinese counterpart to epic,
the narrative matrix that shapes
moral imagination, subsonic and sceptic.
Stand.