Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a classic historical novel of enormous influence, is widely known in China as one of the four great Chinese classic novels. Its author Luo Guanzhong, as the textual research goes, was a scholar lived in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, but his exact birth and death years are not known.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is based on the history of the three kingdoms, Wei, Shu and Wu that strove to reunite the empire at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The history of this period is expounded in the renowned history book Three Kingdoms, and stories of the heroes and their deeds within have also come down from various folk tales, plays, ballads and verses. Out of historical records and folktales, Luo Guanzhong created the enduring historical and literary masterpiece.
The last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty was a period of chaos and disorder, with various military forces rising to fight with one another. The three forces led respectively by Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Quan, which were stronger powers at that time, all wanted to take over the power and reunify China, so the political and military fights with one another were very fierce. Romance of the Three Kingdoms takes those historical events and combats among the kingdoms into account and gives a full range of vivid and poignant portrayal of the political stratagem and warfare, among which the stories of Three Heroes Swear Brotherhood in the Peach Garden, The Battle of Red Cliff, and The Stratagem of the Empty City etc. are so well received that they have been common subject matter of other literary genres like drama and exerted an ever expanding influence.
The literary value of Romance of the Three Kingdoms lies much in the vivid characters sketched in the novel: witty Zhuge Liang, valorous Zhang Fei, loyal Guan Yu, young hero Zhou Yu, and imposing Cao Cao who is full of duplicity. All these figures are so vividly portrayed that in the conception of Chinese people, the characters and their characteristics are firmly connected, and thus have gradually influenced the concepts and customs of the Chinese people in the long history. For instance, Guan Yu is revered by later generations as "the Martial Saint" ("the Literal Saint" is Confucius), the saint of loyalty and courage.
