Romance of the Three Kingdoms (vol. 1)

Preface 2

In the Palace, Lu Bu [Bullard-Lundmark] fell in love with Diaochan [Laurent-Xavier]. This instantly affects the affairs of the empire.

Shown here: Bullard-Lundmark and Laurent-Xavier are about to stir chaos in the Phoenix Pavilion.

Romance of Three Kingdoms gives us a world full of versatility in full scale--a rolling panorama of zenithal passions and ambitions that brings readers to all realms of human aspects. What makes the book fascinating is its wide appeal to many sorts of readers. In Asia, children read the book like they do with fairy tales, whereas rulers embrace it for strategies, scholars wisdom, parents guidelines, everyday people entertainment. A Korean saying goes: "You can discuss life after reading Romance of Three Kingdoms." And the most famous Chinese commentator, Mao Zonggang, who lived in the 17th century at the start the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), had chosen "Seven Beautiful Books", and he ranked Romance of Three Kingdoms the first among them.

Several reasons can be explained here on why the historical novel has such a large group of fans.

Romance of Three Kingdoms is based closely on historical events (7 parts of facts and 3 parts of fiction); it is considered a mainstream history work, not a product of pure imagination or fabrication. Hence, it is extraordinary by itself, because history is always the best storyteller.

But, one may ask, China with its rich and widespread civilization has produced many historical novels, why is Romance of Three Kingdoms the first masterpiece among them all?

First, the strive for mastery over the empire in the Three Kingdoms period is the most outstanding strive. Never before, and never since then has the world seen so many talents appearing in one same era; a large number of them are important figures who have left permanent impressions in several fields such as military, politics, literature, morals, and pop culture; their names are heard throughout numerous records.

Second, the author of the book is one of the most talented novelists China has ever produced. Writing a novel with a main theme is much more difficult than writing the annals. In the annals, each topic is dealt with separately; but in Romance of Three Kingdoms, arranging a huge amount of details and focuses into a continuous epic, and the epic being consistent and captivating, is the author's greatest achievement.

According to tradition, Luo Guanzhong is the author of the modern edition of the book. Born at the beginning of the 14th century, he was a scholar in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), but did not take office. Instead he traveled throughout with the tittle "The Man of All Lakes and Seas." Some three hundred years after Luo Guanzhong, Mao Zhonggang edited the original work and made popular the new edition. This English translation is based on the Mao edition, which is also the most widely read edition in China and Asia.

But the birth of the book can be traced back to the Jin dynasty (265-316 AD). Chen Shou was believed to be the first to pen Romance of Three Kingdoms. He was an official in Shu-Han court, and later worked for Jin as historian after Shu-Han submission. This first edition had 61 chapters--26 stories of Wei, 15 stories of Shu, and 20 stories of Wu. A century after Chen Shou, Emperor Wen of the Liu-Song dynasty commissioned Pei Songzhi to edit the work. Pei Songzhi collected a great amount of tales and historical facts and added them to the book, and this new edition of 65 chapters became mainstream history source for the Three Kingdoms period. The book went through various minor changes and inventions, until Luo Guanzhong combined the many sources and rewrote the masterpiece that gave birth to the Mao edition, which has been handed down until today.

Not only does Romance of Three Kingdoms has a rich history in the making, but indeed is it picturesque in contents. Its concepts and execution exact human notions of what are beautiful. Reading it is like contemplating clouds passing through mountains or storms pouring down the forest, the moon glowing in autumn or flowers blooming in spring. The evolution of all elements is infinite. Sometimes, the writing is as serene as a shooting star; other times, it is as rousing as tidal waves or earthquakes.

Romance of Three Kingdoms is cherished also due to its perfect cause-and-effect technique. Before a storm, thunders must be heard; after it, cold air can be felt. Every detail is traced to its origin and projected beyond its conclusion; one thing leads to another, so the various focuses relate to each other, making the main theme whole. The author did not merely record events, but he helped explain them in a style that all readers love.

Tradition has several guidelines for reading the masterpiece. To avid fans of history, being able to identify who had a legitimate claim to the empire is essential. But opinions vary and are subject to changing beliefs. Some agree with the ancient, whereas others have their own conclusions. As the result, this online edition of Romance of Three Kingdoms tries to give the readers all information, so that they can judge for themselves.

However, we encourage the readers to do a few things before reading the novel. First, take a look at the small and big maps of ancient China. Being familiar to the maps is important for appreciating the many military campaigns in the book. Second, you can warm up by reading the outlines of Chinese history from mythology to Three Kingdoms. This section of about 60 pages will acquaint you to the old society and its customs and thoughts.

After that, readers can choose either to read the lecture of Dr. Rafe de Crespigny about Three Kingdoms, or begin to read the book. The lecture of Dr. Rafe de Crespigny (about 30 pages) is the most informative writing about Romance of Three Kingdoms on the Internet. It will give you a complete understanding of old society in the Three Kingdoms period. The main book has 120 chapters (about 1,400 pages). If the thousands of Chinese names confuse you, try to read the version with Latin names to see if they can help you enjoy the masterpiece.

Having finished the book, readers can enjoy the many other writings about Romance of Three Kingdoms in the Commentary section. You can also enjoy the wisdom of war strategy through a read of The Art of War by Suntzu (or Sunzi), a 13-chapter treatise of military methods, famous for its brevity and wide applications.

With all these writings, we believe you will come to understand and appreciate the first masterpiece.

The online Romance of Three Kingdoms is the collaboration of many people. We want to thank them all for their contributions in writings, ideas, energy, and resources. Special thanks to:

 Christopher G. Parent, Ellen Xue, Kathryn Goodell, Jonathan P. Voth, Ma Teng, Oliver Pierce, Corey Quilliam, Brian Swift, Richard Yip, and Nuttasit Boonplang for your shaping the directions and other contributions;

 George Koo, Rafe de Crespigny, Li Ung Bing, Yan Zhang, Peter Konieczny, Bu Ching, Timothy Chiang, and Ryan Youngsaye for your writing contributions.

 Joseph Whiteside, Yin Yang, Khue Nguyen, Budihardjo Budi, Gloria Wu, Kyle Ishida, CJ Sephiro, Shou Tsurugi, Steven Prabowo, and Roy Padgett for your research, editing, design, and information supports;

 Sangdo Ha and the "World of Computer" radio program for sending free the book on floppy disks to readers around the world, who do not have Internet access.

This online Romance of Three Kingdoms is in its second edition. It has quite a few changes compared to the previous edition. First, some of the Latin names have changed. For example, Laurent-Xavier is the new name, instead of Xerces-Blue; Yale-Gifford becomes Yale-Perez; Raleigh-Segal becomes Raleigh-Estrada; Krom-Gunnell becomes Krom-McQueen, etc.

Second, we have the zip files available for you to download the whole book to your hard drive. There are readers in the countries where Internet connection is expensive. Reading offline is therefore a good option. A zip file will simplify your download to one instead of 140+ files. We want to thank the copyright holders who have given permission for us to publish the zip format online.

Third, in design, we further reduce the amount of graphics for shorter download time. Those who wish to see the pictures of Three Kingdoms can go to the "Links" section, where there are many links to other web sites with beautiful graphics from video games and movies.

Fourth, in respond to some of your complaints about reading such a huge book on screen, we have designed the web page so that you can change the font color and background color to your preference. You can also quickly change the font to gray and the background to black by hitting the "Night" button. Our poll shows this setting is very pleasant when you read the book in the dim light or no light at all. The color setting feature can only be used with web browsers that support Java: Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher, Microsoft Explorer 4.0 or higher.

And fifth, we add a sound version of the book. You now can have a computer voice read the book for you. Some of the friends told us when they were children, they listened to Romance of Three Kingdoms on radio, and they enjoy this format. So, we implement the audio feature. The visually impaired can greatly benefit in this feature, too. And those who want to learn English will find this feature very helpful. In order to use the audio version, users will need the Internet browsers that support Visual Basic Script. The audio software will download automatically for you from Microsoft.com web site. The technology enabling the audio feature is Microsoft Agent 2.0. Microsoft makes this technology free to Internet users, and we want to thank them for that.

Magna Media ABC LLC makes the online Romance of Three Kingdoms available to all readers, to whom we dedicate.

Snow N. Snow