Fate and Loyalty in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms"

One of the aspects of the Romance that makes it a classic is that it is not only a collection of fascinating stories, poems, battle scenes, political or military tricks/strategies; it is also suffused with a moral philosophy, perhaps with more than one.  Values matter more or less to the participants in the story; they always matter to the narrator or compiler of the Romance.  Of these values/beliefs are two that collide as the action unfolds: loyalty and fate.

Loyalty begins with filial piety on the not unreasonable assumption that a son filial to his father and ancestors would be loyal to his lord and to the Emperor.  The first step on the ladder of civil service would be to be recommended for one’s “abilities and filial devotion” (舉孝廉) as was Cao Cao when he was twenty (Romance, ch. 1), even though he becomes the leader of the Usurpers of Han imperial authority.  Of Zhou Yu, it was said that he “unfailingly respected his elders” (以交伯符, Romance, ch. 57). 

At the same time, the idea that Fate determined one’s life events was fairly universal.  Sun Jian, the founder of the Wu kingdom in Jiangdong was known more for his martial prowess than the depth of his understanding of astrology; nonetheless, in chapter 6 of the Romance, he remarks that the emperor’s star had grown dim, foreshadowing the fall of the dynasty. 

While planning the final battles of Chibi in chapter 50 of the Romance, Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang of the Loyalist party discuss whether or not Guan Yu could be counted on to guard the final pass that Cao Cao would have to pass through in order to reach safety; they were both aware of his strong sense of honor and felt that since Cao had shown Guan some kindness in the past, Guan would find it difficult to capture Cao.  Liang remarked that he had consulted the astrological charts and found “no indication that Fate has determined Cao’s capture”; therefore giving the assignment to Guan Yu would allow him to earn merit with mercy and “that is also a good thing.”

Chapter 54 of the Romance provides another striking example of the importance of divining what Fate has in store.  In this chapter, Sun Quan and Zhou Yu of the Wu kingdom that had briefly joined the Loyalists to defeat the Usurpers scheme to use a marriage proposal to the Loyalist Liu Bei (offering Quan’s sister as a bride) in order to lure him into Jiangdong where he can be held for ransom (for the province of Jingzhou).  Zhuge Liang agrees with Liu Bei that this is very likely what the Wu leaders intended, but declares that consultation with the stars indicate that nothing untoward would happen to Bei; he therefore urges Bei to accept. 

This notion of Fate extends well beyond the Three Kingdoms:  Graff, in his Medieval Chinese Warfare (Routledge, 2002), noted that there are several chapters on divination in Tang dynasty military manuals even though the historical records, written by more orthodox Confucian scholars, tend to obscure the role of such practices.  Ichisada Miyazaki, 1981, China’s Examination Hell, documents the widespread belief that Fate and spirits influenced if not determined the results of China’s vaunted examination system.

In the context of the events of the Three Kingdoms, when it seemed clear that the Han dynasty was in trouble, there was bound to be a collision between the value of loyalty and the belief that Fate determines the course of events; what should be the proper role of a man who wished to remain loyal when it seems clear that the dynasty is failing, i. e., losing its mandate to rule?  How can loyalty be demonstrated when it would appear that the Mandate of Heaven decreed a change? 

By the time of the Ming dynasty, the scholars had given sufficient thought to this question and, no doubt with the encouragement of the imperial court, codified the proper response:  a man who had sworn to uphold a dynasty could not change his allegiance even if the Mandate of Heaven decrees otherwise.  Those who had not sworn allegiance were free to choose which side they each would uphold.  This was not so clear at the time of the Three Kingdoms and the uncertainty is reflected in the Romance (compiled during the early Ming dynasty).  Such uncertainty gave rise to debate and argumentation that provides an additional dimension of interest to the stories in the Romance.

In chapter 37 of the Romance, Liu Bei meets Cui Zhouping, a close friend of Zhuge Liang’s (the target of Bei’s search for an advisor in his quest to restore the imperial order).  Zhouping declares that order and disorder both proceeded from Heaven, that “peace is getting old and there is cause for dried up spears to be wielded again all over,” and that once Heaven had determined the course of events man should not stubbornly attempt to reverse it (命之所在，人不得而強之乎).  Bei asks to hear more but declares “I am a servant of the Han and have sworn to support it; I would not dare to leave it to Fate.”  At this point, Zhouping pleads ignorance of contemporary affairs and declines to engage in further discussion.  While, Bei’s oath-brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are dismissive of the encounter, Bei seemed anxious to hear more on the subject.

The clash of these values/beliefs is most clearly stated in chapter 43 of the Romance in which Zhuge Liang debates the councilors of the Wu kingdom as well as Sun Quan himself.  During the debate, Liang is asked what he thought of Cao Cao; he replies curtly that Cao is a traitor to the Han at which point one of the Wu councilors, interjects to say that the Han era had passed and that Heaven would dispose of its end.  Liang replies harshly that in embracing Fate, such a person has dishonored his father and his ruler (天下之所共憤﹔公乃以天數歸之，真無父無君之人也).  

Another of the Wu councilor asserts that Cao’s legitimacy did not only spring from the fact that he was holding the Son of Heaven hostage but also because he, Cao, was related to a former prime minister serving the Han.  Liang replies that, in that case, Cao is not only a traitor to the imperial dynasty but is also despicably lacking in filial piety for he is rebelling against the ruler and the dynasty his ancestors had served (不惟漢室之亂臣，亦曹氏之賊子也).

Liang provides something of a resolution of this collision of values in what might have been the end of his mission to forge an alliance between Bei’s Loyalist forces and those of Wu/Jiangdong; he meets with Sun Quan who asks the question why Bei remained defiant of Cao while a reasonable assessment of the military situation might lead others to conclude that it would be best to submit.  Lord Bei, Liang said, remains defiant because he does not accept that Fate should determine his actions, let others do what they would; Bei would not yield.

 It would seem clear that Zhuge Liang has been made the mouth-piece of the Ming neo-Confucian view regarding the balance of loyalty and fate.  But it should not be assumed that Luo Guanzhong was simply toeing the “party line.”  Of the five bosom friends that regularly met and discussed moral and political concerns, Cui Zhouping and two others opted for the “contemplative life” while Xu Shu was Bei’s first advisor on strategy until a forged letter brought him to his mother who was under house arrest in Cao’s camp.   Zhuge Liang of course chose to become Bei’s second and last advisor.  Just before he met and joined Bei, however, he and Zhouping were on one of their usual wandering trips. 

One can only wonder what they discussed during those days.  It is unlikely that the proximity of the events within the narrative of the Romance was a coincidence, and much more likely that Luo intentionally set the discussion between Zhouping and Bei in such close logical and chronological proximity to Liang’s debate in Jiangdong to highlight the uncomfortable collision of the two values/beliefs.  

The Battle of Chibi (Red Cliffs)

Long ago, along a stretch of a river deep and wide but far away from the consciousness or imagination of All under Heaven (China), a battle was fought that determined the fate of its people for the next four hundred years.

This book vividly retells selections (translated by the author) from the great Chinese classic, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  This novel combines fascinating characters in action as well as ideas in conflict, battle scenes, deception and earnest debate; there is even a marriage proposal arranged for the purpose of entrapping the Loyalist leader.

It weaves together stories, drama, poetry--events and episodes that have engrossed Asian readers and listeners for the last seventeen hundred years.  Above all, the warriors and leaders in this retelling, their loyalties and conflicts, show why this classic has been valued as the best introduction to Chinese thought.  

In its entirety, the Romance is a large work made up of one hundred and twenty hui, scenes or chapters, each usually with at least two dramatic episodes.  It is usually published in two, three or four volumes.  It is not only long but also lacks a central set of circumstances, much as a story about the Tudors would suffer in comparison with one that had the unifying focus of the personal life of Henry VIII or the achievements of the Elizabethan era.

This retelling has selected and translated the eight chapters that describe the events and discussions surrounding the Battle of Chibi (chapters 43 to 50 in the Romance); that battle is generally considered to be the tipping point of the period.  To those eight, I have added eleven prior chapters that supply background to the characters and events, as well as four chapters from after the Battle that takes the story through the death of Zhou Yu, the central actor in the alliance against Cao Cao.  Thus this work consists of a total of twenty-three chapters.  

As a translation, the goal was a readable and lively language as well as internal consistency, eliminating the most visible anachronisms (such as the drinking of tea); it does not otherwise try to correct any detail of Luo’s narrative.  The ubiquitous references to the rites and rituals of welcome and departure have been somewhat reduced; a minor unrelated episode or two have been omitted as well as an occasional poem or part thereof; additions have been made to provide for smooth transitions or clearer indications of the passage of time.  Many passages of the original reflect their origins as dramatic dialogue; I have tried to retain the flavor of these dialogues as they are livelier than any narrative.

The Romance is perhaps the best introduction to “Chinese thought” to be found in classical Chinese literature.  It makes vivid what the Ancients wished to teach through the story of human beings rather than through the collections of sayings of sages; such texts often communicate a surreal quality, a sense of detachment from the human drama.  The main outlines of Chinese social and political thought—Confucian values, Daoist influences, and Realist methods—are reflected in the Romance; it is clear that all three could be entertained in the same minds.  This work has tried to capture such an overview of Chinese Thought as well as to tell the story of the battle at Chibi.

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From the reading of December 18, 2010.

Writing this book

As a Chinese student of European history and political thought, I believe it was inevitable that I would feel guilty at some point for having neglected the study of Chinese classics.  I started, therefore, in 2003 to read in English translation the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Of all the Chinese classics, I considered this most likely to suit my preference in reading.  I had found Arthur Waley's Monkey, a selection from the Journey to the West, amusing but too fanciful and less than even-handed in its discussion of Daoism as opposed to Buddhism, it was after all the story of the pilgrimage made by a Buddhist monk.  The Water Margin struck me as too limited in its view of the world; banditry perhaps had that effect.  I honestly did not know what to make of Jin, Ping, Mei (sometimes translated as "The Plum [Blossom] in the Gold[en] Vase").  At any rate, I found reading the Romance in translation a great disappointment.

When I expressed to some friends my view that perhaps it was an over-rated work, a Japanese woman protested to me that it was her father's favorite book, one that he read over and over.  Later, a Korean friend told me that he owned several translations as a new one seemed to appear every fifteen or twenty years, so popular was the work among Koreans of a certain age.

For other reasons, I started to study classical Mandarin a year or two later and soon tired of the usual exercises in the usual book of language instruction.  Archie Barnes' wonderful Chinese through Poetry (2007) introduced to me the pleasure of reading traditional verse in its original language and gave me the courage to attempt the translation of the poems I found in the Romance.  By that time I had already started translating some of the prose.  These efforts were made much easier by the existence of electronic Mandarin-English dictionaries with a character recognition software that was available for personal digital assistants.  I do not know how I could have undertaken what I eventually did if it were not for Pleco (R) and its product.

Finally, a chance conversation persuaded me that the Battle of Chibi (Red Cliff) was indeed pivotal in the development of the Three Kingdoms and advanced the idea of bringing coherence to a selection from the Romance.  This is open to some debate, of course, for coherence is not a universal literary value.  For example, one suspects that the Ramayana is better known than the Mahabharata not because it is more coherent but primarily due to the unwieldy length of the latter.  The Romance too is a large work, comprising one hundred and twenty hui.  Further, it bears the literary burden of the fact that by the half-way point of the book most of the main characters it started out with are dead.  The Battle of Chibi, therefore, begins where the Romance begins but ends with the funeral of Zhou Yu, commander in chief of the Wu kingdom of Jiangdong and a vital strategist in the Battle.  Several chapters have been skipped over but of the chapters translated little has been left out (except for the last chapter):  an episode here and there, together with a poem or portion of one every so often.  Half of the last chapter translated tells of what happened after the funeral.

I toyed with changing the sequence of chapters or of parts of some chapters but came to the conclusion that Luo Guanzhong, the Ming dynasty compiler of the Romance, had done his work too well.  Lastly, I should say that I have added only to provide smoother transitions and to give a better sense of the passage of time.  The Romance covers events over more than eighty years; the Battle extends over nearly thirty.  In all it took nearly four years to translate and retell the story and more than four months to see it through the editing and proof-reading before publication.  It is my fond wish that this book will  lead non-specialists,  "general readers," to explore the fascinating world of Chinese history, literature and values.

To see a listing or to purchase book click here.

To see a listing for George Henry Lewes, a Victorian Mind, click here

To see my article on "Women in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (you'll have to scroll down a bit), click here

To see my article on "Fate and Loyalty in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (scrolling required) click here

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On December 13, Eric Tomb of Tomes and Booktown and I spoke about the upcoming reading  at his bookstore.  See his blog and listen to the interview by clicking here.
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On Saturday December 18, 2010, a misty moisty afternoon, I gave a reading and signed books at Tomes/Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters.  This was my first as an author and it was a great pleasure to see friendly faces in the crowd!

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For a taste of the battle scenes that are better shown on screen, see following trailer from John Woo's recent movie "The Battle of Red Cliff" (pictured below is Fengyi Zhang as Cao Cao the usurper):