Luo Guanzhong

This second volume of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, covering chapters 33 to 63, was just as awesome as the first. The breathless pace of the action seems to move faster than the story, as each chapter is still crammed with detail, and so it's often hard to judge how much time is passing within or between scenes, but the expansion of the storyline to include the real beginnings of the infamous division into three kingdoms unfolds in a logical and seemingly inevitable way, one stratagem, show more double-cross, and blood oath at a time. Despite the inclusion of the most epic battles yet, it's a study in decision and indecision as well, as more powerful warlords like Liu Biao and Sun Quan risk repeating the fate of Yuan Shao in the face of Cao Cao's relentless ambition. It starts off with Cao Cao consolidating the north, his son Cao Pi marrying Yuan Shao's widow Lady Zhen, and ends with Liu Bei riding off west into the Riverlands to found his own kingdom, but there's seemingly entire books in between.

This volume made me think more about the problem of leadership, specifically of how the characters attempt to enforce or encourage loyalty. This has been one of the underlying themes of the book from the very beginning, of course, but it's in this stretch of the story that the Emperor fades into the background and the three kingdoms begin to solidify, and loyalty is no less important in the destruction of one regime than in the creation of another. In an environment like the collapse of the Han dynasty, where there's a nominally all-powerful Emperor but in practice a nearly unlimited amount of autonomy for essentially independent petty warlords, individuals are confronted by an extra layer of moral choice that informs their actions. How should one balance allegiance to the sovereign with filial duties, and obedience to liege lords against an oath sworn to brothers? Watching the many characters grapple with their moral compasses in the face of all the momentous decisions they make in life-or-death situations each chapter is a real pleasure, even if they're unsure of the right course themselves, and even through Luo's determined editorializing between the Big Two. Liu Bei, the hero who, we're continually told, draws men to him through his virtuous nature and noble deeds, has the same problem of winning his own place in the world as his duplicitous antagonist Cao Cao, who's universally derided as a crafty yet corrosive force, yet it's often difficult to see a principled difference between them.

For example, towards the end of the volume, at a crucial moment in the balance of power between the north and the south, Zhang Song travels to Cao Cao near the end to offer him the vitally strategic area of the Riverlands, but he gives up because they're each too stubborn and prideful, and he simply offers the territory to Liu Bei instead. This momentous decision is presented as right and proper, a result of the magnetic attraction of Liu Bei and repulsion of Cao Cao, yet it's not so different than Pang Tong's disagreement and reconciliation with Zhang Fei, and in fact it's also quite similar to the many minor instances where a governor will surrender a town, or a general will defect at the end of a battle, and the decision to reward or execute them for their shift in fealty seems arbitrary rather than appropriate. There's probably literature out there on how Confucianist or Legalist ethics, or prestige and dominance leadership styles, could be formulated in game-theoretic terms, and how each individual conundrum of whether to keep an oath or do the most expedient thing fits into a coherent framework of morality; ultimately I decided to just sit back and enjoy my suspense and outrage cycles as the two decided whether the latest hapless provincial commander would be rewarded for switching sides or beheaded for his treachery as the circumstances above and beyond him shifted.

The real breakout star of this volume isn't Liu Bei or Cao Cao, however, but Kongming. The legends of his sagacity are so great that Liu Bei travels three times to convince him to come work for him, to the consternation of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, whose jealousy at Kongming seeming to supplant them in Liu Bei's heart is a nice bit of character development. And the legends are true! If ever there was a character calculated to delight and entertain audiences, it would be the Sleeping Dragon, an impossibly clever advisor who can concoct ruses subtle enough to fool even Cao Cao and has a handy ability to summon up powerful winds to aid in battle. My favorite example of his ridiculous skill was the scene where Sun Quan's henchman Zhou Yu wants to offer Liu Bei a sham marriage to Lady Sun in order to take him hostage and force him to surrender the strategic province of Jingzhou, which Liu Bei was dragging his heels on relinquishing after the death of his kinsman Liu Biao. This is a dangerous trip for Liu Bei, but no worry: Kongming not only arranges matters so that Liu Bei keeps Jingzhou, but that he successfully marries Lady Sun for real, via the hilarious mechanism of literally giving general Zhao Zilong three sacks with instructions to open each one at the right time to get Liu Bei out of each of Zhou Yu's traps. The buddy comedy friendship between Kongming and fellow wizard Pang Tong is also a real highlight, as each occasionally drops in to make fun of the other before revealing their latest scheme.

Of course, Kongming is far more famous for his deceptive prowess at the Battle of Red Cliffs, which takes up a substantial portion of this volume. Once again I was left marveling at the skillful pacing and ingenious plotting: almost more space is devoted to the feints, deceptions, and betrayals leading up to the battle than to the action itself, and yet as Cao Cao's ill-fated expedition to conquer the south is left routed and shattered, thanks to Kongming's wheels-within-wheels ploys and last-minute conjuration of an east wind, you are never lacking for excitement. You're almost spoiled, too, since right before that is an equally-exciting chapters-long running fight as Liu Bei's retreating army and mass of villagers try to cross the Yangtze for safety in the south, and Cao Cao's forces are only barely held off in the Battle of Changban, where the (in my opinion underrated) Zhang Zilong makes one of his many clutch saves by rescuing Liu Bei's son against great odds (and not for the last time). The heroism and dramatic tension don't let up for a bit, and while there are many points where the ratio of clearly fictional "how could he have known?" strokes of impossible genius against more plausible Nth dimensional chess moves that real people might make gets a bit much, it's all so much fun you don't mind for a minute.

Now's no time to stop reading. show less

The Outlaws of the Marsh (Shui Hu Zhuan) is the third of the Six Classic Chinese novels I have read so far, and the earliest one: it was written in the 14th century, but like The Scholars and The Plum in the Golden Vase, it is set several centuries before that time, specifically in the 12th century during the Song dynasty – there does seem to be a distinct pattern here, with each of the three novels referring to their particular present only by way of writing about the ostensible past; show more which is all the more remarkable as the novels are otherwise quite different from each other. (Not in all respects, however, as one thing I have learned from this reading project is that the ancient Chinese liked their novels not only very long but also with lots and lots of characters – The Outlaws of the Marsh may not be quite as sprawling in that regard as The Scholars, but again we get a veritable host of protagonists which make War and Peace look like an intimate drama in comparison.)

There appears to still be a debate about the authorship of The Outlaws of the Marsh – while the author is not (like it was the case with The Plum in the Golden Vase) anonymous, there are several candidates to chose from. The most common ones are to ascribe it either to Shi Nai’an (ca. 1296–1372) or to Luo Guanzhong (ca. 1330–1400, who also wrote Romance of the Three Kingdoms, another once of the Big Six) or, in fact, to both of them, with Shi Nai’an responsible for most of the novel and Luo Guanzhong for its last twenty chapters or possibly just for editing it (which is the theory I’m going with, for no particular reason at all). Everyone agrees, however, that the novel is based on an earlier collection of stories, the written version of a series of oral tales around the bandits from Liangshang Marsh – a point which, I think, is of particular importance for understanding the novel (and to which I’ll return later). And to make textual matters even more complicated, there are three versions of the novel, a 70, 100 and 120 chapters version respectively. Because there is currently no Kindle version available in Germany (or rather, and somewhat bizarrely, only of the final two volumes) of what is the most complete (120 chapters) and apparently also best English translation by Alex and John Dent-Young, I went with the translation by Sidney Shapiro which is based on the 100 chapter version and supposedly also very good. It certainly read very fluently and without the pseudo-Oriental floweriness with which many translators like to garnish their efforts. In fact, I was surprised at quite how entertaining a read this was – one wouldn’t really expect a 14th-century novel to be a fun romp, but this is exactly what The Outlaws of the Marsh turned out to be.

Basically, this is an adventure story describing the multiple and varied ways in which the protagonists find themselves outlawed after falling prey to the corruption of the Song dynasty empire and finally end up as part of a huge gang of bandits residing in Liangshang Marsh, their various deeds and misdeeds and how they finally seek and find pardon with the emperor and go to war for him. It is full of memorable characters, all of which are much larger than life – this being a marked difference to The Plum in the Golden Vase and The Scholars, both of which are realistic at heart, while The Outlaws of the Marsh reads like an odd mixture of the picaresque and the heroic and is also full of explicitly supernatural elements and occurrences.

One reason why the author of The Plum in the Golden Vase may have chosen to take a story from The Outlaws of the Marsh as the starting point of her novel is that we find a similar degree of total corruption here – with the difference however, that most characters here still feel the urge to justify their deeds. The novel is often considered as a kind of Chinese Robin Hood variant, and on the surface this seems certainly plausible; but one only needs to scratch lightly for the veneer of benevolence to come off. The outlaws keep insisting that they never harm civilians or people who did not deserve it – which is not keeping them, however, from slaughtering whole families of people who have opposed them, or killing a child for the sole purpose of persuading someone to join their band. Granted, ethics in 14th century China probably were not quite the same as in 21st century Europe, but I do doubt that the cold-blooded murder of a child was any more acceptable there and then than it is here and now. Another example of the prevailing hypocrisy is how the initial crime of one of the novel’s main protagonists, Song Jiang, (he killed his concubine) seems less and less grievous every time it is mentioned, until the original murder has transformed into nothing but a “judicial mishap.”

In the second half of the novel there is a marked shift from adventures of individual characters towards large-scale troop movements, a shift that is completed when the bandits give up their criminal careers and start to work in the service of the emperor – the rest of the novel then is taken up by the description of two military campaigns, one repelling invaders from the Liao empire and one putting down a revolt. There is no change in the behaviour of our heroes however who not only continue merrily to slaughter innocents, but also have no scruples to pretend to surrender to their opponents, only to then stab them in the back – again, I doubt there ever was a culture or a time when this would have been considered chivalrous, and yet both the former bandits and the narrative keep touting their presumed nobility of character.

Something, then, is decidedly off here – or is it? I mentioned before that The Outlaws of the Marsh is a retelling of an earlier collection of tales, and for my part, I am convinced that the author of the novel is giving his source material a subversive spin. When one looks closer one notices that the bandits’ leader, Song Jiang, is almost the only one that is interested in getting a pardon from the emperor and that he pulls it through only by circumventing or going against the outright opposition of his fellow chiefs. And things do start to go wrong for the Lianghsang Marsh bandits from the moment they change sides; during the first campaign it is merely lack of official acknowledgement and court intrigues Song Jiang and his men have to struggle with, but once they start fighting Fang La and his fellow rebels – who clearly is an image of what the outlaws of the marsh may have become had they not courted the emperor’s favour instead – the death toll rises, and I was getting a strong impression that the author felt a grim satisfaction in killing off his protagonists one after the other.

There seems to be second narrative running along the “official” one, or rather a second, alternative interpretation of events which sees the story of the outlawed bandits becoming a part of the established order not as a triumph and rise to glory, but rather as a decline and ultimately a tragic downfall. This is nowhere clearly stated, in fact it goes completely against what the narrative states explicitly, and yet there is such a large amounts of irritations, off-kilter moments and general inconsistencies between what is claimed and what the reader sees actually happening, that their cumulative effect is to topple the “official” interpretation in favour of a subversive one which strongly insinuates maybe lawlessness is the better state of things. Emblematic of this is the character of Li Kui, the Black Whirlwind who is almost the exact opposite of Song Jiang. He is loud, boisterous and extremely violent, almost a force of nature – and possibly the most likable character in the novel. As an embodiment of anarchy, he seems to stand against every virtue The Outlaws of the March claims to advocate, but ultimately it is not restrained, reasonable Song Jiang who represents this novel best, but it is Li Kui’s untamed, irresponsible utterly over-the-top nature which captures the true spirit of The Outlaws of the Marsh. show less

I’m tempted to call this an epic but vast I think fits this better. I got this book a few years back on a whim, because flicking through it it looked interesting but then it just stayed in my eBook library, as I had no idea how to read this. Before this I knew close to nothing about Ancient and Imperial China, I’m just amazed by it. From reading this I have so many questions, but I know I need to park this for now as I explore other books and subjects and get ready for 2026.

The last show more third did drag, and it was good that I took a break, during it I went through my other books to get a bit more sense of this world, this helped to get me to the finish line. The first two-thirds I enjoyed with a 4* rating, here there was many moments of comedy and drama compared to the sombre tone of the last third. The last third is harder for me to gauge but I also enjoyed this in a different way; for giving me a better insight into this world.

To read this has been a surprise and a really nice way to finish 2025 for me. show less

This was one of the first books I've ever read, where I became so morally disgusted that I almost decided to not finish it. A certain vignette involving cannibalism brought to the fore just how dramatically different cultural mindsets can be. After a helpful exchange with an old school acquaintance from China I decided to keep going, and I'm glad I did. The rest of the book (both volumes/parts) was a fascinating and exciting read. So much of it reminded me other great classics of western show more literature (from the Illiad to the Gallic Wars) -- and yet there was so much different. And that similarity really provided a great basis to appreciate the differences. While the "orientalists" of the past certainly went to far in decrying the values of the "far east" -- reading this book helped me appreciate that the east and west are separated by a greater gulf than many modern folks want to admit.

(2024 Review #4) show less