Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or a Chinese Malcolm Tucker in the second century

I leapt from Enter the Dragon, pirouetted in slow motion through the air, silk robes swirling, then landed with one toe on Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame before catapulting high into the sky, turning an aerial somersault, and landing on John Woo's 2008 film Red Cliff.

I liked the latter so much that I've started reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the classic Chinese novel on which the film is based in part. It's a historical novel of high adventure, recounting battles and political maneuvering in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, the decades of shifting alliances and power struggles that accompanied the decline of the Han Dynasty.

Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei take the Oath of the Peach
 Garden in a 1591 edition of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Think a novel so concerned with power struggles can't be entertaining? Here's an adviser speaking boldly to a Han emperor so enfeebled that he has let the palace fall under the sway of eunuchs:

"All the Empire would eat the flesh of the eunuchs if they could, and yet, Sire, you respect them as if they were your parents."

Malcolm Tucker may talk that way, but I suspect few real political advisers do, and that's shame.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012