Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong: Introduction

Luo Guanzhong, a Luo Ben, was born in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, a native of Taiyuan, Shanxi. In the middle of the Yuan Dynasty , as the wounds of the War against the Song Dynasty subsided , the economic and cultural center of gravity of society began to shift from the north to the south. Hangzhou, the former capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, not only became a bustling city with a large population and developed commerce, but also an important center for the development of theatrical performances and the art of "speaking". Therefore, many northern intellectuals and "book club talents", such as Guan Hanqing, Zheng Guangzu, and so on, have migrated to the Hangzhou area. Luo Guanzhong, who is a novelist and a miscellaneous playwright, is also bound to be influenced by this social trend and become one of these writers who have migrated south. Luo Guan's chinese and foreign titles "Scattered People in the Lake and the Sea", this title implies the meaning of roaming the rivers and lakes and wandering the ends of the world. Around 1345 to 1355 AD, he came to Hangzhou. Many talking artists speak books here, and some playwrights also play here. Luo Guanzhong is friends with like-minded people. Coupled with his great love for folk literature, when he arrived here, he naturally did not want to leave. It was also at this time that Luo Guanzhong became acquainted with Shi Nai'an, who was living in Hangzhou at the time, but was about twenty years older than him. Luo Guanzhong's place of origin is also known as the "Dongyuan people", which is the reason why he lived for a period of time in "Dongyuan" (present-day Shandong Province) after he roamed out of the Jin Dynasty. He came here to be attracted by the stories of Liangshan Po and Song Jiang, which were very popular in society at that time. He went there to investigate and understand the local customs and customs, and collected materials on the stories of the Heroes of the Water Margin that were circulated in the folk. This is an important reason why he later participated in the compilation and creation of "Water Margin". Stories about the "Thousand Saints" and "King of Beizhou" were also widely circulated in society at that time. Therefore, Luo Guanzhong collected and sorted out this story in this area, so that there was a work of "The Legend of the Three Ping Demons". Around 136 Ο to 1363 AD, Luo Guanzhong, the "King of Youzhitu", came to Zhang Shicheng, who was in charge of the rebellion. However, Zhang Shicheng did not attach importance to intellectuals and did not listen to their opinions. In September of the twenty-third year of Zhizheng (1363 AD), Liu Liang, Lu Yuan, and others left one after another, and soon Luo Guanzhong also left Zhang Shicheng and went north again, and in the twenty-sixth year of Zhizheng, Luo Guanzhong returned to Hangzhou. The romance of the Three Kingdoms was written when after that year. At this time, he was already a man in his fifties, had a relatively mature view of history and life, and fully met the conditions for creating the "Popular Interpretation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms". By the third year of the Ming Dynasty Emperor Hongwu (137o AD), Luo Guanzhong had written twelve volumes, and the writing of the number of volumes after that was four years after Hongwu. During Luo Maizhong's writing of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Shi Nai'an migrated from Suzhou to Xinghua and died in the third year of Hongwu. In order to commemorate his mentor Shi Nai'an, Luo Guanzhong decided to process and supplement Shi's "Water Margin" after completing the "Popular Interpretation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms". It was written between the fourth and tenth years of Hongwu. While processing and supplementing "Water Margin", Luo Guanzhong continued to create a series of historical works. After Luo Guanzhong finished creating these works, he was already an old man in his sixties. In order to publish these works, he came to Fujian from Hangzhou around the thirteenth year of Hongwu, because Jianyang in Fujian was one of the centers of the publishing industry at that time. However, this goal of Luo Guanzhong was not achieved. Around 1385-1388, Luo Guanzhong lived for seventy years and died in Luling, the hometown of the Song Dynasty national hero Wen Tianxiang.