Three Kingdoms

by Luo Guanzhong (Moss Roberts trans. )

  The novel corrects this as well as other fictional excesses in the dramatic texts, almost always working to bring its narrative into closer alignment with the historical texts, the SGZ and the ZZTJ. For example, the Southland founder Sun Jian is shown running from the field with a stomachache in Three Heroes Battle Lü Bu at Tiger Trap Pass (San zhan Lü Bu), while the novel restores much of his courage and determination. (Still, the novel does Sun Jian the injustice of crediting his defeat of Hua Xiong to Lord Guan. )49

  At one crucial point in the story, however, the Southland general Lu Xun emerges as a hero in his own right, almost on a par with Kongming. When Liu Xuande defies Kongming and invades the Southland, Lu Xun executes a brilliant counterattack and wins the battle at Xiaoting (or Yiling). So humiliated militarily and politically that he cannot return to Shu, Xuande soon dies; the cause of Han restoration from a base in Shu is doomed. Though the PH and the Yuan drama virtually ignore Lu Xun, the SGZ treats him as a general of the utmost importance. And Three Kingdoms, guided here by the SGZ, depicts Lu Xun with unqualified admiration and never uses him as a foil to show a Riverlands figure to advantage. The novel treats no other Southland figure in this manner. If the novel has been unfair to other Southland heroes, its treatment of Lu Xun rebalances the scales and gives the Southland a share of its rightful historical glory.50

  The salient feature of the Yuan plays is that they are either entirely fictional or else fictional elaborations on traces of historical data. Working with a small cast of characters and within a time frame restricted to a few episodes, the plays develop their chosen subjects imaginatively. This was an inspiration to the novelist, who incorporated dramatic dialogue liberally into the narrative. In fact, if Luo Guanzhong is the author of the several plays attributed to him, he might have worked closely with Yuan and Ming dramatists and been familiar with the techniques of staging.51

  The most striking creation of the dramatists is the character of Lord Guan. From a minor character in history—the SGZ devotes less than a thousand words to him—he became a dominant figure of Yuan dynasty Three Kingdoms drama, a pivot around which other parts of the tale were organized. This may be, as Liu Zhijian speculates, because there was a close connection between the cult of Lord Guan in the Yuan period and Three Kingdoms drama, performances of which may have been staged in temples dedicated to "King Guan."52 The PH was dominated by Zhang Fei and Kongming, but the drama made the figure of Lord Guan paramount and in this respect decisively influenced the novel. The single play The Lone Swordsman, dealing with Lord Guan's solo visit to the Southland, makes reference to a surprising number of incidents, persons, and details found in the novel: the breakup of the Han empire; the relations between Emperor Xian and Dong Zhuo, as well as between Dong Zhuo and Lü Bu; the peach garden sacrifice and oath of brotherhood; the physiognomy of Lord Guan (phoenix eyes, red face, long beard); the battle at Tiger Trap Pass; the escape from Xuzhou (with Liu Xuande) to join Yuan Shao; the battle at Bowang; the killing of Che Zhou, Wen Chou, and Yan Liang; the killing of Cai Yang (by which Lord Guan proves his loyalty to his brothers); the Xiangyang banquet; holding off Cao Cao at Dangyang slope; the three trips to Sleeping Dragon Hill to find Kongming; the prelude to the battle at Red Cliffs (the beating of Huang Gai); Kongming's strategic ingenuity; Lord Guan's becoming governor of Jingzhou; Liu Bei's becoming king of Shu; Liu Bei's establishing his rule in Hanzhong; the conflict between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu that led to the founding of the Han dynasty. Another play, Gao Wenxiu's The Meeting at Xiangyang (Xiangyang hui), develops the circumstances around Xuande's meeting with Shan Fu—a crucial fictional portion of the novel. So full a list of events from Yuan plays would suggest that early in the Yuan, audiences were familiar with a wide range of Three Kingdoms legends and saw Lord Guan as a central figure in those legends.

  Lord Guan is also the principal fictional creation of the novel. The plot turns on him more than on any other character. The reader cannot lose the line of narrative so long as he knows what Lord Guan is doing at any given point. And Lord Guan's death, which triggers Liu Xuande's invasion of the Southland, is what drives the tale to its conclusion. After his death, Lord Guan's fictional essence is underscored by his return as a ghost. This shift to a supernatural mode could not have been effected with any other character such as Liu Bei, Kongming, Cao Cao, or Sun Quan because they are historical figures of real substance. Lord Guan can be brought back to life to affect events in the novel because he is made mostly of imaginary materials to begin with. Unlimited by historical reality, he is the novelist's to shape as he will.53

  The return of Lord Guan as a ghost is based on Guan Hanqing's other surviving Three Kingdoms play, The Double Dream (Guan Zhang shuangfu xi Shu meng). In the play, Liu Xuande, now ruler of Shu, pines for his brothers, who are stationed far away. After they appear to him in a vision, he sends an envoy to Jingzhou for news. The envoy learns of Lord Guan's death. Zhang Fei has died at the same time (the historical Zhang Fei died two years after Lord Guan). Meanwhile, in Shu, Kongming withholds the news of Lord Guan's death, lest Xuande retaliate against the Southland. The soul of Lord Guan then meets the soul of Zhang Fei, and after decrying their unjust deaths to each other, they travel west together to urge Xuande to avenge them. The two ghosts are reunited with their living brother, who executes Mi Fang, Mi Zhu, Liu Feng, and Zhang Da, ending the last act.

  In the novel, Lord Guan's soul returns to the world of the living (chapter 77) by undergoing a conversion at the hands of a Buddhist monk, Pujing (Universal Equilibrium). Pujing reproachfully reminds Lord Guan's new ghost of the many heads he took before losing his own. Lord Guan concedes the truth in Pujing's words, that is, that he has been justly repaid for his own acts. Through this recognition of Buddha's Law, Lord Guan transcends historical (and biographical) time and becomes a benign deity, his soul freed from the effects of his lifetime acts. From the mountaintop, Lord Guan can now recognize the unreality (kong) of the river of human events, the fearful symmetry of karma, and the chain of cause and consequence (or retribution), in which all other characters remain entrapped. Once transcendent, he can render aid to those he deems wronged, like Sima Zhongxiang in the PH prologue.

  Luo Guanzhong's novel culminated and synthesized many traditions, both historical and literary. It also eclipsed a number of its predecessors—as far as the literary public is concerned—in particular, the PH and Yuan Three Kingdoms drama. Most of the Three Kingdoms plays performed today are Ming or Qing works inspired by the novel.

  LUO GUANZHONG AND HAN NATIONALISM IN THE YUAN-MING TRANSITION

  In the Yuan period the Liu-Cao rivalry continued to have the kind of symbolic force— Han versus non-Han—that it did in the Southern Song-Gin period. But there were also variations on the theme.

  Those Chinese (Southern Song loyalists above all) who saw the Yuan dynasty as a continuation of foreign rule—Mongols replacing the Jurchen rulers of the Gin dynasty— may well have maintained the preference for the Liu Xuande group. But the Mongols were first enemies and then conquerors of the Gin, and they may have shunned the connection with Cao Cao that the Gin had been proud to make. The Mongols may have wished to associate themselves with the Han side of this issue. Thus, the above-mentioned plays were not underground literature covertly directed against Yuan rule. To the contrary, plays sympathetic to the Liu Xuande group were welcomed by Mongol officials and performed at court. In the latter part of the dynasty the government paid homage to the Three Kingdoms heroes. In 1322, 1328, and 1340, the spirits of Kongming, Lord Guan, and Zhang Fei were honored as kings. These measures came at a time of increasing Han militance against Mongol rule, and the government sought to fortify its legitimacy by appropriating these nationalistic symbols.54

  The Three Kingdoms played a special role toward the end of the dynasty when the question of legitimating Yuan rule in relation to the three previous dynasties—Gin, Liao, and Song—was debated in Mongol ruling circles. The Mongol leader Toghto was in charge of a project to prepare a history
of these three dynasties, and the solution he accepted was to treat none of them as legitimate, comparing them to the three kingdoms Wei, Wu, and Shu, which had been absorbed into the Jin. Those opposed to this treatment of the three pre-Yuan dynasties, however, most notably Yang Weizhen, sought to preserve the legitimacy of the Song as the basis of Yuan rule and relegated the Liao and Gin to the status of alien houses, treating them like the Xiongnu intruders led by Liu Yuan at the turn of the fourth century. Yang was punished for his theory, but his position was closer to the popular tradition of Liu legitimacy through the kingdom of Shu.55

  In the final years of the dynasty, anti-Mongol rebel leaders also used Three Kingdoms figures in their propaganda. The future first emperor of the Ming, Zhu Yuanzhang, when leading a Red Scarves peasant revolt in 1363, described the Mongol commander Wang Baobao in a letter: "With armored cavalry and crack troops, he holds the northern heartland in his thrall, his ambition no less bold than Cao Cao's."56

  When Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming dynasty in 1368, Han rule was restored over all China for the first time since 1127. Having overthrown the Yuan by force of arms, and therefore having no interest in depicting itself as a "successor," the Ming denied the legitimacy of Yuan rule. This denial led to a broader effort to restrict acknowledged legitimacy to the "Han" (or Chinese) dynasties of the past. "Hu Han... insisted on a distinction between Han and non-Han rule in adjudging legitimacy, thus repudiating the claim of the Mongol rulers.... Fang Hsiao-ju [Fang Xiaoru] espoused his theory on legitimate succession... and included... racial and cultural superiority in addition to moral right and unified political control as bases of dynastic legitimacy."57 That Zhu Yuanzhang turned to the Han and not the Song as his model dynasty may be explained by the fact that he broke with the group of anti-Mongol rebels who had rallied around the slogan of Song restoration, and sought to erase every trace of his connection with them. He may have been responsible for the death of one rebel leader, "Song Emperor" Han Lin'er in 1367.

  The presumed author of Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong, lived through these events of the Yuan-Ming transition. It would be satisfying if there were enough biographical information for a consensus about his life and its connection to the dramatic fall of the Yuan dynasty and the rise of the Ming. The information that exists, however, is so sparse and contradictory that there is no thesis, much less a consensus, on Luo's life, his political outlook, and their connection to the novel.

  The earliest notice about Luo Guanzhong occurs in a Ming text called Luguibu xubian (Supplementary jottings on those who have died). In a brief text of some fifty or sixty words the writer says that in his youth he was a friend of a Luo Guanzhong much his senior (perhaps in his fifties), had last seen him in 1364, and now, more than sixty years later (i. e., after 1424), has no information concerning Luo's life or death. The account says that Luo rarely sought human society and was skilled in writing poems (yuefu, a genre typically used for social criticism) with implied significance. It mentions Luo's sobriquet, Huhai Sanren ( "Wanderer by Lake and Sea" ), but no given name (Ben, in some editions of the novel). The sobriquet, which suggests taking refuge in a time of adversity, may also explain the large number of places with which he is associated. Nothing is said of a novel called Three Kingdoms nor of any other prose or drama he might have authored; nothing is said of Luo Guanzhong's youth or middle age or of his political ambition.58

  Some scholars argue that Luo Guanzhong was deeply involved with the anti-Mongol leaders in south China and may have entered the service of one of them, Zhang Shicheng (fl. 1353-67), who controlled a considerable empire in the south. When Zhang transferred his allegiance to the Mongols, Luo Guanzhong (who may have tried to dissuade him) then turned to historical writing to express his political aspirations. This interpretation is based on a brief notice in the Baishi huibian (Collection of minor romances) by the Ming scholar Wang Qi: "Luo Guanzhong and Ge Kejiu were engaged in a quest for an ideal king to govern the empire; and they did encounter a true ruler. Subsequently... [Ge] gave himself to medicine and [Luo] to writing unofficial history."59 The zhenzhu or "true ruler" was Zhang Shicheng, presumably. It is also possible that it was not Zhang Shicheng whose service Luo entered and left, but that of another rebel leader or even Zhu Yuanzhang himself.

  Scholars who depict Luo as active in the anti-Mongol movement acknowledge that Luo Guanzhong shows little sympathy for peasant rebels in his novel, but they point out that the novel attributes the rebellion to corruption at court. As chapter 1 explains, Emperors Huan and Ling persecuted able and decent officials while they honored and trusted the eunuchs, who sold office and rank, employing only their relatives and punishing only their political foes. As a result, court administration worsened, the people murmured in discontent, and throughout the empire men's minds turned to thoughts of rebellion. The entire novel could then be seen as a study of the kind of leadership necessary to lead the people through a time of troubles to a reformed court and a reunified empire.

  Another group, however, doubts that Luo Guanzhong was a partisan of the rebels. One such scholar explores the significance of Luo's connection with Ge Kejiu (alleged by Wang Qi) and also his probable discipleship to the neo-Confucian scholar Zhao Baofeng. Both Ge and Zhao had participated in organized military action against the Red Scarves rebellion. Presumably, Luo Guanzhong would have been on the same side, the Mongol side; his novel, then, with its clear opposition to rebels, becomes a natural extension of his political position.60

  If Luo Guanzhong was in fact sympathetic to the pre-Ming rebel movements against the Yuan, or to one of those movements in particular, then the Song dynasty of 1355 should be considered. One Red Scarves leader in north China, Liu Futong, made Han Lin'er emperor of a new Song dynasty. The reign title declared was Long Feng; 1355 was the first year. But the movement was short-lived. In 1359 Mongol armies overwhelmed the new dynasty's forces and bases, driving Liu Futong and Han Lin'er into the arms of Zhu Yuanzhang; the Red Scarves movement in the north then declined, while in the south it developed new strength. There is nothing to connect Luo Guanzhong with this part of the Red Scarves movement, except that the reign title Long Feng, "Dragon and Phoenix," has an extraordinary prominence in the novel through symbolic association with Kongming (Sleeping Dragon) and his alter-ego Pang Tong (Young Phoenix, a minor but key figure). Also, from the standpoint of legitimism, it may be that Luo looked favorably on Song legitimacy even if he did not advocate restoration.

  Perhaps one final speculation may be indulged in before we leave the unsolvable problem of the author and turn to the text of the novel itself, about which there a good deal more information. If the "true ruler" that Luo Guanzhong encountered was Zhu Yuanzhang, then it is possible that Liu Ji, one of Zhu's most important advisers, is the contemporary figure to which the portrait of Kongming refers.

  According to his biography in the Mingshi, he had a broad and thorough knowledge of the philosophers and was almost supernatural in anticipating events. In discussing the shape of the empire, righteous honor was written on his face. Moreover, he was a master of astronomy and meteorology. "Zhao Tianze of Shu, in judging the men of the region below the Great River, named Liu Ji first, regarding him as a kind of Zhuge Kongming." Zhu Yuanzhang solicited his service many times before he finally emerged from the hills [to serve him], Liu Ji participated in the great battle at the Poyang Lakes, which resembles the battle at Red Cliffs. Zhu Yuanzhang called Liu Ji "My own Zifang."61

  If Luo Guanzhong's "true ruler" was Zhu Yuanzhang, then the connection to the novel might lie in Zhu Yuanzhang's attempt to portray himself as an emperor after the model of Liu Bang, to whom he proudly compared himself. Three Kingdoms could be seen as celebrating the restoration of Han-like rule in China, as if perhaps Zhu Yuanzhang had fulfilled the mission that Liu Xuande and Kongming had left unfinished. Thus, the novel naturally builds upon the contradiction between Liu Bei and Cao Cao. As Qiu Zhensheng concludes his essay cited above,

  An anti-Yuan position naturally drove Lu
o Guanzhong to accept all the more firmly the legitimism of a pro-Liu, anti-Cao view which had been taking shape since the Song and Yuan. For Luo to have affirmed Cao Cao would have been tantamount to affirming the legitimacy of the Yuan dynasty which occupied the northern heartland and extinguished the Song dynasty. Luo Guanzhong, who "strove for kingly government," could never have accepted this... and he poured his unrealized ideals into the figures of Liu Bei and Kongming, the sagely sovereign and the able minister.62

  Perhaps at some future time this theory will be borne out. Even if it is finally determined that the novel (as many have argued) is not a product of the Yuan-Ming transition, but a product of the mid- to the late fifteenth century (that is, a generation or two before the first, 1522, edition), then Qiu's view may still have some relevance. Zhu Yuanzhang's victory over the Mongols in 1368 was decisive but not complete. From beyond the Wall, the Mongols continued to pose a serious military threat. In 1449 they inflicted a massive and humiliating defeat on the Ming armies in the battle of Tumu, capturing the Chinese emperor Ying Zong (who had led the offensive) and detaining him in Mongolia—covered with the dust of exile—for more than one year. (1449 was the last year of Ying Zong's reign period Zheng Tong, "Legitimate Rule." ) This shocking event led to a resurgence of Han-nationalist hostility toward the Mongols and toward their non-Han predecessors.

  In addition, the last half of the fifteenth century saw an upsurge of local peasant rebellion and a concentration of eunuch influence at court under Emperors Xiao Zong (r. 1488-1505) and Wu Zong (r. 1506-21). Such a climate might well have encouraged the composition of Three Kingdoms—it is after all a novel about the end of the Han—as a way to remind the Ming Chinese that the Han dynasty so admired by their founder fell and that the Ming might too if it did not maintain the policies of its founder. If such be the case, then the author of the novel chose to remain anonymous and used the name Luo Guanzhong for purposes unknown—perhaps to give the work an air of historical authority, perhaps because Luo had some minor fame as a writer of historical fiction and dramas and was a plausible choice, even if no other work attributed to Luo Guanzhong has anything like the scale, style, and structure of Three Kingdoms.