Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Author: Guo Yubo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: Literary classics with enduring charm, offering wisdom and strength to readers across generations. In the face of a highly competitive future society, children need to be prepared. From cultivating qualities, shaping character, and strengthening psychological resilience to forming ways of thinking, developing intelligence, and honing willpower—all are important topics. The monotony of family education, the limitations of school education, and the inadequacies of social education leave children feeling confused about many issues. Literary classics present a rich world, with vivid and concrete characters, intriguing plots, and complex social dynamics, encouraging young readers to observe people, relationships, and the intricate society depicted in the books. It can be said that literary classics are textbooks for life, enabling young readers to understand society and grasp the essence of life through the fates of the characters, unknowingly gaining keys to enlighten their minds. Moreover, the beauty of literature and language in these classics is like a clear spring nourishing the heart. "Chinese Classics: A Hundred Literary Masterpieces" is a light boat that allows young readers to sail through the vast ocean of knowledge.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is one of the most famous and outstanding long, chaptered historical novels in Chinese literary history. The author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was Luo Guanzhong, a figure from the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Before its completion, the "Three Kingdoms story" had already undergone hundreds of years of development. In the Tang Dynasty, the story of the Three Kingdoms was widely circulated and even familiar to children. With the development of urban literature, the "storytellers" () of the Song Dynasty had specialists who told the Three Kingdoms story, known as "telling the Three Kingdoms" (). The Three Kingdoms Zhihua that emerged in the Yuan Dynasty was essentially a manuscript used by storytellers, though relatively brief and rough, it already had the scale of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Based on folk legends and the creative works of artists, Luo Guanzhong also drew on materials cited in Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms and Pei Songzhi's annotations (including materials from Records of the Time and its annotations), and through immense creative effort, he wrote the grand masterpiece—Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also skilled in depicting wars, featuring both prolonged sieges and swift close-quarters battles; both large-scale battles involving millions of soldiers and smaller skirmishes with hundreds. In these wars, some show the strong overcoming the weak, some the weak overcoming the strong, some winning initially but losing later, some turning defeat into victory, some engaging in direct combat, and some using surprise tactics. In short, these wars are depicted with endless variations and unique characteristics, each scene thrilling and vivid,ing the social reality of a turbulent era.