三国演义 －Reading a difficult book

[rob07]

I've been reading 三国演义 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) over the last few months and just finished it on (Chinese) New Years Day. Written in the fourteenth century, it is one of China's four great classical novels (四大名著). It is one of the myths of studying Chinese, apparently held by both foreign students and many Chinese alike, that reading any of the 四大名著 requires a godlike level of Chinese language, surpassing that of the ordinary native speaker, but they are in fact surprisingly accessible. See also Renzhe's great thread on 水浒传, another of the 四大名著.

It is an absolute classic, telling the (more or less true, subject to artistic licence, embroidery and bias) story of how China split into three separate kingdoms at the end of the Han dynasty and then reunited, starting from one of the best opening lines of any novel ever written: "话说天下大势，分久必合，合久必分“ - roughly, what has been broken apart for a long time must unite, what has been united for a long time must break apart. It has so many other classic quotes, for example, 曹操, the founder of 魏国 expressed his philosophy as follows: "宁教我负天下人，休教天下人负我" － roughly, I would rather screw over everyone under heaven than have anyone screw me over, that was basically how he became a king.

So many of the stories from 三国演义 are classic parts of Chinese culture that are generally well known and loved, many of which have been made into movies. The battle at Red Cliff (赤壁), which inspired a two part movie of the same name a few years ago is probably the most famous.

But there are two stories that particularly stand out for me. The hero of 三国演义 is 刘备. At the battle of 长板, 刘备's infant son 刘禅 was trapped behind enemy lines. One of 刘备's top generals, 赵云, singlehandedly rescued 刘禅 in an act of exceptional heroism and returned the infant to 刘备. 刘备 told him he had been wrong to risk his life because nothing was more important to him than his close relationship with his generals, and to underline the point, physically threw his infant son away.

Based on his close relationship with his generals, 刘备 was subsequently able to establish the kingdom of 蜀汉, which was inherited by 刘禅 when 刘备 died. However, 刘禅 was a disaster as emperor of 蜀汉, earning a reputation for exceptional stupidity, possibly even being mentally handicapped. When 蜀汉 collapsed, 刘禅 and his men were held prisoner in 魏国, where a party was thrown to entertain them. 刘禅's men were all depressed, in the novel, only 刘禅 was happy because as long as he had good food and drink, he quickly forgot what had been lost, thus giving rise to the pejorative 成语, 乐不思蜀. (Of course in real life, acting like that would probably have been 刘禅's only chance to stay alive, but in the novel while 刘备 can do no wrong, 刘禅 can do nothing right.) I guess the moral may be that a close relationship with your generals may help you to establish a kingdom, but if you deliberately throw your son away when he is an infant, you maybe shouldn't expect much from him in the way of carrying on your legacy.

At first glance 三国演义 looks very hard, although the 四大名著 were written in vernacular Chinese (白话), 三国演义 in particular is strongly influenced by classical Chinese. Since there is a lot in it that at first glance looks different to modern Chinese, this has given rise to the myth that it is impossible. However, for an advanced learner that can reasonably comfortably read modern Chinese, I can attest that if the motivation is there, it is much easier to pick up the additional vocabulary and get accustomed to a different writing style than it is to, say, increase one's reading speed to a near native (or even respectable) level, get most of the grammar questions right on the HSK6 or to convert a substantial part of passive vocabulary to active vocabulary. It is surprising easy to get into the swing of it, Renzhe has said "I read 水浒 faster than I read 南方周末. That's ridiculous!", and I can certainly relate to that a bit. It is interesting to read on Renzhe's 水浒传 thread initial scepticism about the feasibility of the undertaking, but when people like Roddy and Imron actually read some of it, they expressed pleased surprise that it actually is accessible. Obviously, you have to be pretty advanced for the 四大名著 to be accessible, but you certainly don't need to go beyond, or up to, native levels of proficiency.

Of course, reading ability is also different from speaking and listening ability in that what you can do is less dependent on pure language level and more dependent on the time you are prepared to invest and the level of frustration you are prepared to put up with.

Here are some of the issues I had with reading 三国演义:

- Luckily, I already had picked up from somewhere that classical Chinese uses 吾 for 我 and 汝 for你. 三国演义 however uses all four characters. It bothered me a bit that I didn't know why the text switched between them, but I just read them as interchangeable and it didn't interfere with the story. A few hundred pages in, I had worked out that 吾 and 汝 seemed to be more formal than 我 and 你.

- I had also heard that 也 at the end of sentences was one of the key characteristics of classical Chinese, unfortunately, I hadn't heard what this actually meant. I was puzzled by it but decided to just ignore it because it didn't seem to be doing anything really. Later someone told me that it was was the classical Chinese equivalent of 啊. I grew quite fond of the usage eventually, it was fun to mentally translate sentences such as “刘备英雄也” and "Liu Bei is a hero. Yeah!". (I'm sure I'm not the first Westerner to do this.)

- 三国演义's writing style is that each character is generally a separate word, rather than words often being composed of two characters in modern Chinese. There has been a bit of a debate as to whether you should study words or characters, I always thought it is important to study both, and this helped me here.

- People of that period had various different sorts of given names. They got their 名 when they were born and males generally got their 子 at 20. Most characters were referred to by both 姓 and 名 the first time they were mentioned and generally thereafter by their 名 only. This looked a little weird because 名 at that time were (almost?) invariably only one character long, so 张飞 was typically just "飞". However, there was an exception for 刘备, until he became a 王, he was almost always referred to by his 子 which was 玄德. I was confused a bit by this, but apparently after a man reached adulthood, it was disrespectful for others of the same generation to address him by his 名, so by using 刘备's 子 but the 名 of his rivals 曹操 and 孙权 to refer to them, I guess the novel is trying to elevate 刘备 over his rivals since he is the hero of the book. However, there were other cases I never really figured out, 刘备's top adviser's 姓名 was 诸葛亮 and it wasn't always clear to me when he would be referred to as 诸葛亮 (or 亮) rather than 孔明 and vice versa.

- Grammar is a weak point of mine. I'd nearly finished this before I realised I couldn't remember seeing "了" used once. I guess this wasn't the best book to read to improve my modern Chinese grammar. Oh well.

[skylee]

males generally got their 子 at 20

Typo alert. All of those 子's ...

Apart from Liu Bei, Cao Cao is called 孟德.

Besides ability and motivation, interest is also important. I can read long novels and love many of them, but not this one. I can't even finish watching the TV series. I might one day finish it for the sake of finishing it. But I can't seem to get more interested in this book.

[Bates]

Amazing, as a Chinese,I have never read the whole book, but some famous parts are known for everyone in China// cool, mate

[陳德聰]

I have played too many hours of "Dynasty Warriors" to throw it all away and learn the real story!

Also I think that 也=啊 can be fun but then didn't you miss a whole lot? Lifted this link from skylee's #2 post in this thread.

[rob07]

Also I think that 也=啊 can be fun but then didn't you miss a whole lot?

No, if you look at what the dictionary definitions are saying, for example, the first one says that if you put 也 on the end of a statement it increases the air of certainty, the second one says if you put it on the end of a question it increases the air of doubt, it you put it on the end of an expression of regret, it increases the tone of regret, etc. It looks complicated when it is split into so many different meanings but a lot of them boil down to pretty much the same thing. It is maybe a bit of an oversimplification to equate it with 啊, but it is basically the same, an intensifier that increases the 语气 of whatever it is put with that is generally not independently meaningful.

When it comes to 语气 it is best not to rely on a dictionary too much, seeing how it is used in context is more helpful. That was a lot of the point of my first post, to read 三国演义 it is not necessary to exhaustively study the detail of everything that looks different to modern Chinese in advance, it is generally not that different that you can't just jump in and work it out as you go along. I gather it may be different for "real" Classical Chinese, but I've never attempted that.

Completely agree that 三国演义 won't be everyone's cup of tea. I could see myself being much less interested in it now if I had been made to study the history in school like most Chinese people. And it is quite a "blokey" book, that seems to put a lot of women off.

[Guest realmayo]

Thanks for this cool post. Have read the book in English, now it's really encouraging to think that reading it in Chinese might be doable at some point in the future.

[Lu]

I have it in a 对照 version, started on it, then thought I was reading too fast as it's such a dense book with big important plot points and character development happening in only a few paragraphs. Perhaps I should read the Chinese side to slow myself down a bit and digest it better. Thanks for the write-up, perhaps it is managable then.

[heifeng]

Congrats on finishing it, that's a great accomplishment! I enjoyed it too while I was 'consistently' reading it (I should check how far I actually got into it hmmm..), but then I set it down for too long and failed to pick it up again.

The difficulty I found in reading it, is I personally feel/recommend one must read one whole chapter straight through, otherwise, it's quite difficult to remember all of the thousand or so

characters

and the many plots, once you let the book collect some dust...oops

However, I feel that reading this definitely helps with character recognition and knowing different titles of officials and such, weapons, forms of torture, etc. (edit: & execution)

[Meng Lelan]

And it is quite a "blokey" book, that seems to put a lot of women off.

It doesn't put me off at all! Sometimes I even re-tell the funny and/or suspenseful parts to my kids.

weapons, forms of torture,

That is exactly what attracts me to reading Three Kingdoms.

[rob07]

it's quite difficult to remember all of the thousand or so characters and the many plots

The other thing it is difficult to keep track of is all the different cities and where they all are. My copy had a fold out map, that helped a lot.

[renzhe]

Dude, you rock. That's the second classic you're finished while I'm still struggling with my first.

Let me get one thing straight. If I understand correctly, you finished this in three months?!??!??

Luckily, I already had picked up from somewhere that classical Chinese uses 吾 for 我 and 汝 for你. 三国演义 however uses all four characters.

One thing I noticed in 水浒传 is that these things often depends on who says them. Different characters (coming from different parts of the country) will often have a specific (and consistent) way of speaking. This includes vocabulary and erhua too. This probably also plays a role in 三国.

I had also heard that 也 at the end of sentences was one of the key characteristics of classical Chinese, unfortunately, I hadn't heard what this actually meant.

I've always taken it to be a strong copula. So in classical passages, I translate it as "is".

[renzhe]

The difficulty I found in reading it, is I personally feel/recommend one must read one whole chapter straight through, otherwise, it's quite difficult to remember all of the thousand or so characters and the many plots, once you let the book collect some dust...oops

One thing that has really been helpful with 水浒传 was taking notes about characters and what they did in my own words.

Without my notes, I'd have been lost a quarter of the way through.