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Taylor Liss
United States
Quincy
Massachusetts
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Today we're going to talk about one of the four great classical novels of China: Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
wikipedia wrote: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century, is a Chinese historical novel based on the events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history, starting in 169 and ending with the reunification of the land in 280.
The story (part historical, part legend, and part myth) chronicles the lives of feudal lords and their retainers, who tried to replace the dwindling Han Dynasty or restore it. While the novel actually follows literally hundreds of characters, the focus is mainly on the three power blocs that emerged from the remnants of the Han Dynasty, and would eventually form the three states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The novel deals with the plots, personal and army battles, intrigues, and struggles of these states to achieve dominance for almost 100 years. This novel also gives readers a sense of how the Chinese view their history in a cyclical lense. The famous opening lines of the novel summarize this view: It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide (話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分).
The story was very influential in a number of board games like San Guo Sha (currently the most popular board game in China), video games like Dynasty Warriors, and influential in some RPGs too like Weapons of the Gods.
The main purpose of this blog entry is to help you figure out which version of the book to buy incase you are interested in reading it. There are many versions of the book floating around, but in total there are four books of note:
The four versions are these:
1.Moss Roberts Translation published by Foreign Language Press (4-book box set)
2.Moss Roberts Translation published by University of California Press (Unabridged, 2 books)
3.Moss Roberts Translation published by University of California Press (Abridged, 1 book)
4.C.H. Brewitt-Taylor published by Silk Pagoda (2 books)
I don't have much to say about the differences in these versions that can't be summed up from a post in this forum:
lady wu wrote: CHBT
Pros:
- Stylized writing
- More of an "old-timesy-epic" feel
Cons:
- Uses Wade-Giles romanization
- No notes
Roberts
Pros:
- Notes galore and helpful commentaries and stuff
- Uses the more familiar Pinyin
- Slightly more modern style of writing; easier to read
- There's a dual-language edition which should be good for someone practising reading Chinese.
Cons:
- The 4-volume Foreign Language Press box set is full of typos
- The 2-volume University of California Press set is unwieldy. The notes are all at the end of volume 2, and there is no table of contents with the chapters listed (it's basically impossible to find a specific chapter in that edition).
I should also mention that the 4-volume Foreign Language Press box set is also of very low production quality. It has been described as being made of "rice paper".
For those of you not familiar with the Wade-Giles system, it is a romanization system used to transcribe Chinese to English developed in the mid-19th century. It was eventually replaced with the pinyin system which became the official mode of transcription in 1958 and is still used to this day. If you wish to read Chinese literature, I would highly suggest you become familiar with the Pinyin system. It is similar to how you must learn to pronounce French words in order to read a translated French book properly.
Now as for e-books, that's a whole different story. Many times when you obtain an e-copy of a book, it will be missing some or all of the publishing data. Sometimes even the translator's name is missing. I've put together a comparison of chapter 1 from the Moss Roberts UCal Press Unabridged version and the C.H. Brewitt-Taylor Silk Pagoda version to help you figure out which version you have. Other than that you are on your own! Good luck!
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