Romance of the Former Han Dynasty

Author: Cai Dongfan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: A popular historical masterpiece that has gained fame both at home and abroad. Renowned historian Cai Dongfan uses official history as the backbone and anecdotes as the weft. After ten years of painstaking effort, he vividly portrays five thousand years of Chinese history in a novelistic style. The novel follows a traditional chapter structure, employs accessible language, and includes witty commentary. It authentically recreates the tumultuous process of the evolution of Chinese civilization. It depicts the emperors like Qin Shi Huang and Han Wudi, Tang Taizong and Song Taizu, as well as the customs and livelihoods during dynastic changes. It delves into the bloody battles on the frontiers and the intrigues in the palace, revealing the wisdom of survival amidst the rise and fall of empires. The book narrates stories such as using the "swap the flowers and trees" trick to present a beautiful concubine, replacing a mother with a daughter-in-law to satisfy a lustful empress, executing a false father and adopting a mother to become emperor, enacting laws to deceive the people, descending the mountain to avoid rain and crossing the Xiang River in a boat during a storm, accidentally hitting someone and escaping to meet a strange hermit who reveals an omen, ordering the construction of the Great Wall, trusting treacherous ministers who destroyed poetry and books, building the Arhat Palace and engaging in large-scale construction, and the scholars dying in a deep valley while the tyrant discovers the original jade.