Rise and Fall of the Sui and Tang Dynasties Chronicle

Author: Cai Dongfan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Cai Dongfan, a renowned historian and novelist of the Republic of China, aimed to "save the nation through historical narratives" and spent ten years creating The Popular Historical Romances of China. Spanning from Qin Shi Huang to 1928, the series comprehensively records the 2,166 years of Chinese feudal history. It gained fame for its rich content and well-sourced material, becoming highly favored by readers. The writing style of this series combines elements of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Mao Zonggang's annotations, featuring main text, annotations, and overall summaries, all self-annotated by Cai Dongfan. Through these annotations, he either refuted fictional claims, noted the sources and variations of certain historical materials, provided explanations of ancient official systems, legal systems, geography, artifacts, titles, and even colloquialisms, or praised or criticized characters to help readers better understand the main text and clarify historical context. In terms of historical source selection and application, Cai Dongfan primarily relied on official histories, supplemented by folk histories and anecdotes, with all such sources requiring collateral evidence and rigorous verification to ensure accuracy. Due to his strong emphasis on historical authenticity and opposition to fictionalization, this romance, though popular, holds significant historical value. Romance of the Southern and Northern Dynasties is one of The Popular Historical Romances of China. It consists of 100 chapters, in which the author discusses the rise and fall of the four dynasties of the Southern Dynasties—Liu Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen.