The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a famous long historical novel in my country. The author Luo Guanzhong (approximately 13301400), name book, alias Huhai Sanren.He may be from Taiyuan (also Luling, Qiantang, Dongyuan, etc.).Born at the end of Yuan Dynasty and died at the beginning of Ming Dynasty. The Yellow Turban Army uprising in the first year of Zhongping (184) by Emperor Ling (Liu Hong) of the Eastern Han Dynasty disintegrated the rule of the Eastern Han Dynasty.After the failure of the rebel army, the warlords fought frantically in order to seize power, forming the separation of the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu.It took nearly a hundred years from the Yellow Turban Army's uprising to Jin's destruction of Wu (280) and the reunification of the whole country.The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the historical story of this period.

Long before the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written, the stories of the Three Kingdoms had been circulated among the people.This has been recorded in the Tang Dynasty texts. In the Song Dynasty, folk artists who specialize in telling the stories of the Three Kingdoms appeared.On the basis of rich folk literature, Luo Guanzhong consulted historical records and added his own imagination to write the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms.The Romance of the Three Kingdoms we see now is a popular version that was processed and revised by Mao Zonggang in the early Qing Dynasty. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms vividly describes the sharp and complex contradictions and struggles among the various groups within the rulers by describing the rise and fall of the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu, and Wu.Through the historical stories narrated in the book, people can see that the feudal rulers were cruel, treacherous, greedy, and extremely self-serving at the expense of others, as well as the masses living a miserable life of displacement and massacres under the melee of warlords.The book also shows the desire of the masses to oppose the split and demand the unification of the country in the process of spreading the stories of the Three Kingdoms, especially in the Song and Yuan Dynasties.The author is good at vividly expressing various major historical events through artistic images.The description of contradictions and conflicts among various groups in the book provides many useful strategies and experiences in politics and military affairs.In the history of Chinese wars, due to the correct subjective guidance, the famous battles where the weak defeated the strong because of correct subjective guidance, such as the battle of Yuan Cao Guandu, the battle of Wu Wei Chibi, and the battle of Wu Shu Yiling, are all described in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in a complete and popular way. .Therefore, in the long-term circulation process, this work not only helps the masses understand the ugly nature of feudal rulers, but also plays a certain role in popularizing historical knowledge.At the same time, it also has something to learn from in art.

There are many feudal dross in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.The author does not know what is the driving force for creating history. He describes the history of the Three Kingdoms with the idealist view of heroic history and the theory of historical cycles.There are also some superstitious descriptions in the book.All of these, we should use a new point of view to seriously criticize and eliminate the feudal dross, so as to prevent all feudal ideas from eroding us. In order to meet the needs of readers, it is now republished in the collated edition in 1954.At that time, it was sorted out based on Mao Zonggang's version and revised with reference to the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms published in the preface of Ming Jiajing Renwu (1522).Individual words and sentences that were not corrected in the Mao version were not as good as those in the Jiajing version, or even made mistakes, should be adjusted according to the Jiajing version.There are also some corruptions in historical names such as names of people, places, and institutions in the Mao version, or they were corrected according to the Jiajing version or historical records.Some brief notes are made on ancient words.

There must be many mistakes and shortcomings in the compilation work of this book and the superficial explanation made this time, and I earnestly hope to receive criticism and help from readers.