Romance of the Three Kingdoms (2 volumes) Author: Luo Guanzhong (Ming Dynasty) Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House

Introduction
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, also known as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is the most famous and outstanding long chapter-based historical novel in the history of Chinese novels. The author of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was Luo Guanzhong in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, and it was revised by Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang, father and son. Before it was written, the "Three Kingdoms Story" had gone through hundreds of years of historical development. In the Tang Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms Story was widely circulated, and even children were familiar with it. With the development of citizen literature and art, there were "talking" artists in the Song Dynasty who specialized in telling the Three Kingdoms Story, which was called "Shuo Sanfen" at that time. The "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that appeared in the Yuan Dynasty was actually a book used by storytellers. Although it was relatively simple and rough, it had already begun to reach the scale of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Luo Guanzhong wrote a magnificent masterpiece, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, based on folk legends and creations of folk artists, and according to the materials cited in Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms and Pei Songzhi's notes (including the materials in A New Account of Tales of the World and its notes). After a huge amount of creative work, he wrote Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which consists of 24 volumes and 240 chapters. Later, it was revised by Mao Lun and his son Mao Zonggang, forming the 120-chapter version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms that we see today.

Since the Mao-annotated version selected by Renwen Publishing House is quite different from the Ming Jiajing edition of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the idea of ​​supporting Liu and suppressing Cao has been developed to an almost pathological angle, and a large number of poems and comments in the original text that praise Cao Cao's side have been deleted. Therefore, people have the wrong impression that "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" attacks Cao Cao and praises Liu Bei. Moreover, this revised version infinitely deifies Liu Bei's side, and even deletes the plot that Zhuge Liang was going to burn Wei Yan to death in Shangfang Valley, and describes Zhuge as a perfect and almost godly image. This is something you should pay attention to when reading.

Since this version uses the revised version with Mao's comments and does not include the comments of Mao's father and son, it will give people the illusion that this version is different from the Mao's version. In fact, this book is exactly the same as the Mao's version, except that the comments have been deleted and the editor's footnotes have been added. Please pay attention when reading.