Event Name: Chinese History Lecture: Romance of the three kingdoms
Event Date: 06/06/2010
Event Description: We had a tea gathering talk about Xuanzang- the famous monk in Tang dynasty to travel 19 years to get the Buddhism script from India and “silk road”in February organized by Helen Liu and talked by Mr Kwok Shui Liu who is this meetup member. We ended up also compared the west and Chinese’s history around the same time and had a lot of fun about it.

Chinese History Lecture: Romance of the three kingdoms

We also had a plan to introduce more Chinese history to our meetup members through the four famous novels. “Three kingdom tale” is another one and we want to introduce some Chinese heros to the western audience and most importantly how to learn something from them and apply that in our daily life?

While I am sure you are going to enjoy the history lecture with tea. You probably have to do your homework before you come, the recommend reading are: Roberts, Moss, tr. Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel
Introduction.

Intro:
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a historical novel which consider one of the Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel, the story itself narrate the period between “The Yellow Turban Rebellion” (184 CE) to the “Reunification of China” (280 CE) under Jin Dynasty. During this unstable time, China was ravage with numerous wars and struggle among different warlords. Numerous heroes rise and fall during this struggling time, they achieve their fames through different type of acts, some achieve through marital status, some achieve through by out tactics other strategists, some achieve through their own personal principles.

No matter which ways those heroes achieve their fame, these characters and the novel itself had numerous impact toward the Chinese’s society. Till this day, this novel still impacting numerous Chinese and Japanese, especially Japanese simply take this period and this novel to their heart.

The author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms were often credit to Luo Guanzhong, however, one thing need to point it out is the version which we read till this day is belong to the edition version during the Qin Dynasty, edit by Mao Lun and his son Mao Zonggang. They significantly edited the text, reorganize plotlines, and fitting the novel into 120 chapters. While the story itself flow much better compare to several editions, however, the tone of praising certain character (Liu Bei) over other character (Cao Cao) are well established. Whether this notion has anything to do with Mao’s political background remain unknown.

The following topics are going to be covered:

Yellow Turban Rebellion
Dong Zhuo’s reign of terror
Sun Ce builds a dynasty in Jiangdong
Liu Bei’s ambition
Battle of the Red Cliffs
Liu Bei’s takeover of Yi Province
End of the Three Kingdoms