Prisoners of the Cave: Love, Loss and Survival After the Chinese Communist Revolution

By Meihuai Ke

In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes a group of people who have been chained in a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. They watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and they give names to these shadows. Although they are not accurate representations of the world, these shadows become the prisoners' reality.

One prisoner is freed from the cave and, after seeing the natural world, realizes that the shadows are an illusion. He returns to the cave and tells the other prisoner what he has seen. The prisoners of the cave, however, who know only this life would rather see him die than hear the truth, and they sentence him to death. This is the tale told by these volumes.

Prisoners of the Cave: Love, Loss, and Survival After the Chinese Communist Revolution is a translated, abridged edition of the original Chinese publication The Dream in Lake Village. The first of two volumes recounts the true stories of villagers living in Nanke, a small lakeside town in southern China, from 1949 to 1999.

These stories cover many pivotal, political events from Chinese history, including the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Land Reform Movement, Anti-Rightist Campaign, Three Red Banners Movement, Reform and Opening Up, and June Fourth Incident--all of which had huge permanent impacts on Chinese society.

Beginning with a kind-hearted widow named Aunt Li, who seeks to find the truth behind the chaos and turmoil of the world, the novel follows the paths of many of her family members, friends, and neighbors. Their stories of suffering, loss, love, and success continuously return to the two threads that run through the entire novel--one of good and one of evil. The progression of their lives reveals that humans are inherently good and that no matter how evil an ideology or practice, it can only pollute an inherently kind and compassionate mind for so long. Evil cannot run rampant forever--eventually, good will triumph.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798887317007

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

New Insight into Human Nature

Preface

Volume 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Li Chaoqing

Chapter 3: Yin Huaide

Chapter 4: The Struggle Session

Chapter 5: Zhao Yueying

Chapter 6: Class Identification

Chapter 7: Immoral Love

Chapter 8: Qu Siwei

Chapter 9: Ke Heyi

Chapter 10: Zhang Aiqing

Chapter 11: Ferocious Women

Chapter 12: A Bitter Romance

Chapter 13: Ke Hegui

Chapter 14: The Anti-Rightist Campaign

Chapter 15: Burying the Living

Chapter 16: The Anti-Rightist Struggle

Chapter 17: Foraging

Chapter 18: Ke Qiwen

Chapter 19: Principal Li

Chapter 20: The New Student

Chapter 21: Preventing Peaceful Evolution

Chapter 22: Criticizing the Bourgeois Intellectuals

Chapter 23: The Road of Resistance

Chapter 24: Rebel Groups

Chapter 25: Ke Tieniu

Chapter 26: Hong Feng

Chapter 27: The Split

Chapter 28: Wang Renchuan

Chapter 29: Lianhe

Chapter 30: A Kind Man

Chapter 31: Zhao Laifeng

Chapter 32: Mutilated Bodies

Chapter 33: Li Hengquan

Chapter 34: The Educated Youth

Chapter 35: Zhang Zhicheng

Chapter 36: General Zhou

Chapter 37: The Mountain Village

Chapter 38: Reminiscing

Chapter 39: A Battle of Wits and Fortitude

Chapter 40: Crazy Xiao

Chapter 41: Zhao Guangming

Chapter 42: Liang Qiong

Chapter 43: Loving Your Children

Chapter 44: Loving Reform

Chapter 45: Saving the Poor Students

Chapter 46: Giving Up the Model Title

About the Author

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Prisoners of the Cave

Love, Loss and Survival After the Chinese Communist Revolution

Meihuai Ke

Copyright © 2023 Meihuai Ke

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88731-699-4 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88731-700-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Volume 2

Chapter 47: Yangjiaodong

Chapter 48: The College Student

Chapter 49: The Wise and Virtuous

Chapter 50: A Straight Man

Chapter 51: Ke Chengyin

Chapter 52: The Foolish Mother

Chapter 53: The Older Generation

Chapter 54: Ke Tianren

Chapter 55: Deng Songxiong

Chapter 56: Topping the List

Chapter 57: Gathering the Loyal

Chapter 58: Li Jianshu

Chapter 59: Making a Living

Chapter 60: The Corporation

Chapter 61: The Trade Fair

Chapter 62: Taking Hostages

Chapter 63: The Prisoner

Chapter 64: Corrupt Officers

Chapter 65: Miss Yan

Chapter 66: Marrying a Hero

Chapter 67: The Lone Hero

Chapter 68: Using Force

Chapter 69: Secretary Chen

Chapter 70: Paying Off Debts

Chapter 71: The Dance Hall

Chapter 72: Xing Bailian

Chapter 73: Fooling the People

Chapter 74: Shady Deals

Chapter 75: The Two-Sided Mirror

Chapter 76: The Martyrs' Cemetery

Chapter 77: The Highway

Chapter 78: The Vice Governor

Chapter 79: Brave Officers

Chapter 80: The Scholars

Chapter 81: Stealing from the Weak

Chapter 82: The Investigation

Chapter 83: Donghu

Chapter 84: Stabbed in the Back

Chapter 85: Breaking In

Chapter 86: Seeking Justice

Chapter 87: The Life Sentence

Chapter 88: Fulfilling the Dream

Epilogue

New Insight into Human Nature

My Thoughts on Prisoners of the Cave: Love, Loss, and Survival after the Chinese Communist Revolution

An enlightened reader

(First draft October 10, 2003, and revised December 25, 2010)

One

I was fortunate enough to read an early copy of Prisoners of the Cave: Love, Loss, and Survival after the Chinese Communist Revolution. Before I read it, I doubted that the author, Meihuai Ke, had that much to write about, and he certainly wasn't some bored lowbrow fiction author who sat around churning out books. Nonetheless, I decided to look it over, and as soon as I began, I was both shocked and riveted. I adored every page and stayed up the entire night just to finish it. I strongly feel that, upon first reading, Prisoners of the Cave is a romance. A second closer and deeper reading, however, reveals several complex ideas on rationality, reason, and human nature.

The book includes a total of eighty-eight chapters contained in two separate volumes: volume 1, chapters 1–46; volume 2, chapters 47–88.

Out of all the Chinese novels I have read, both classic and modern, this truly has both the highest level of artistry and the most advanced ideological content. Every word and sentence has been carefully thought out and meticulously constructed, written using the sweat and tears of a kind, honest soul. If years and years of suffering could be spit out as a single pool of blood, it would be that blood that was used to create these words. Ke takes a metaphysical approach to human life and society. Based on the ethical concept that people are inherently good and the idea that society contains both good and evil elements, he created certain standards. He then used these standards to carefully select referential materials and plan the overall layout of the book. Its ideological content is therefore expansive, and its impressive length and structure are the results of careful planning and sculpting. He has a truly profound mastery of the language, his artistic technique is refined, and his smooth writing always flows naturally. This novel creates, without a hint of artifice, a vivid picture of social life in China over the past fifty years. It is, therefore, clear that Prisoners of the Cave should be called not only a work full of passion and anger but also one that confronts complex ideas on logic and rational thinking.

Reading Prisoners of the Cave, I discovered many new facets of both the world and our society, but the insight it gave me into human nature was by far the most profound.

We have been recording history for thousands of years, but in that time, how many people have truly been able to distinguish between good and evil in this world? Ke's vivid imagery gives us new insight into ourselves: our creator, the Tao, and the human nature we have been endowed with are all filled with benevolence, not evil. The inherent goodness and rationality of human beings, however, have been distorted by the evils of society, which is what led to the emergence of both good and evil habits. The desires of human beings are naturally benevolent, but as the natural desires of a few strong individuals begin to expand, greed appears. These desires are labeled as legal and rational, and soon, evil theories emerge. These evil theories are propagated, turning into harmful habits and customs, and when evil theories and harmful customs enter mainstream ideology and culture, evil ideological and cultural traditions also emerge, leading to things like corrupt autocracies. These evil ideologies and autocracies feed off one another, creating a vicious cycle that can last for thousands of years, and people born into these systems know nothing else. They have been brainwashed by evil theories and influenced by harmful traditions, which eventually rob them of their inherent goodness and rationality and turn them into beings purely motivated by emotional desires. Eventually, good and evil become confused and even reversed, and these evil actions begin to be called benevolence. There are always certain people, however, whose goodness and rationality remain unchanged, meaning that there will always be a struggle between good and evil.

This is why Prisoners of the Cave is not simply a novel; it also paints an accurate portrait of Chinese society and life within it over the last fifty, or even five thousand, years. It touches upon the theory of human nature in terms of ethics, the conception that humans exist in a painful state in which both purity and filth are entwined deep within their souls. Prisoners of the Cave tells us that if we want to eradicate evil social phenomena and evil autocratic systems from the world, humans must have their natural goodness and rationality restored. They must learn to channel the benevolence within themselves and engage in rational thinking. This, of course, is a dream for the distant future, but it is one that can be fulfilled. Every new generation is born with inherent goodness and rationality. As long as those autocratic systems that feed on evil theories and harmful customs are overthrown, and as long as the children of the new generation are not corrupted and brainwashed, we may be able to attain this beautiful dream within only a couple of generations. Two of the main characters in the novel illustrate this goal: Ke Tianren and Aunt Li. Ke Tianren was ultimately punished while Aunt Li lived to be one hundred.

I firmly believe all Chinese works that go against the mainstream Chinese imperial ideology and cultural traditions of Confucius and Mencius, those that espouse humanitarianism and attack the idea of autocratic rule, should and will be seen by the world. Dream of the Red Chamber is one example, and Prisoners of the Cave is another. Meanwhile, those Chinese works that promote maintaining the so-called cultural confidence of autocracy will never be anything more than the treasures of the Chinese empire. They will be looked down upon by those who value freedom, equality, democracy, and the rule of law, and they should not and will not be seen by the rest of the world.

Two

The first chapter contains a general outline of the entire book, with the most content and depth. One could call it an encyclopedia: no matter which angle you approach it from, it is incredibly rich in academic content and knowledge. Someone who has lost all their goodness and rationality, who does not have fifty years of life experience, and who lacks a deep understanding of life would not only be unable to write a novel like this, but they would also probably be unable to even bear reading it. This is why Ke at one point laments, Idiots love to recount their dreams—it is those dreams that contain blurry pictures of their true souls.

The first chapter can be divided into seven different parts.

The first part includes two folk songs that can be used to explain the background of the novel and the writing. This alone demonstrates why the novel was so difficult to write.

The second part explains the material used to write the novel. The uniqueness of the material is why Ke was unable to write a typical story of loyalty and righteousness, a sycophantic work that simply praises those in power.

The third part discusses creating the focus—that is, the difficulty of establishing a theme. He criticizes typical stories of loyalty and righteousness and the obedient literature written to follow imperial orders (a term Lu Xun also jokingly used to describe his own works). He then points out both strengths and weaknesses of great Chinese works like Jin Ping Mei and Dream of the Red Chamber. The goal is to illustrate how Prisoners of the Cave breaks away from all these paths to do something different.

The fourth part discusses the effects contemporary literature has on society, including cultural markets, writers, readers, and language. It exposes and criticizes the sycophantic novels penned by so-called serious writers that do nothing but praise those in power, along with the fantasy and martial arts novels written by lowbrow authors that can ultimately corrupt their readers' souls. He explains that Chinese writing has become so vulgar it has abandoned the rules of the modern Chinese language and risks completely destroying the art of literary creation. His goal is to illustrate how Prisoners of the Cave washes away the filth that blankets the souls of modern writers and readers and how it protects and defends the rules of the modern Chinese language.

The fifth part describes the book's first dream of good and evil. It begins with the dream's good stage, the enters into the nightmare. This dream of good and evil contains both broad and profound lessons. It not only provides a framework for many of the dreams of good and evil in the book but also one for the book's overall structure. True human nature is both strikingly and thoroughly depicted in this dream of good and evil. The main characters in the dream include Guo Suqing, Gao Yunying, Wang Xuyuan, Ke Tianren, and Ke Hegui. Guo Suqing, Gao Yunying, and Wang Xuyuan are all normal and benevolent people. Meanwhile, Ke Tianren is an evil man, one who should be banished to the depths of hell. Only Ke Hegui is able to break away from what Buddhists call the six realms of existence and jump out of the three realms, which correspond to our state of being. Only he is a free spirit in the universe, the Buddha that Śākyamuni became, the Tao as described by Lao Tzu, Socrates' conception of knowledge, a pure soul. This dream contains all the major issues facing Chinese society today.

The sixth part explains the motivation for writing this book.

The seventh part contains a poem that also acts as a summary.

Three

The second, third, and fourth chapters discuss human nature.

Chapter 2 focuses on benevolence.

The village featured in the book, Nanke, is full of picturesque lakes, forests, and mountains. It is a natural environment well-suited to human existence. We come upon Aunt Li, burying the corpses of two dead soldiers. Her words and actions only reflect kindness; indeed, her heart contains no evil principles: no contradictions, none of the emotional distance found in relationships, none of the Confucian benevolence and justice or oppositions attached to status, and none of the dialectics of struggle. She only knows that both of them are humans who have suffered, humans who were instigated by evil men and suffered unjust deaths.

If people are inherently kind, why were these two ignorant young soldiers forced to fight until death? This is what she asks herself. Why has the vicious cycle of great chaos followed by powerful governance and powerful governance followed by great chaos continued for thousands of years? Aunt Li's answer is simple: people have turned into monsters, and the deepest, most profound answers to our reality can be found in chapter 3.

Chapter 3 portrays evil.

An evil society can distort and defile a person's inherent nature. This chapter includes specific descriptions of certain characters in the novel.

Jiefang, for example, was a simple and kind child who worked as a herder boy, but resentment began to grow and his heart when he was mistreated by his master. It was around this time he first began being educated in communist revolutionary theory. His goodness was soon covered in dirt, and a murderous rage in his heart led him to kill his master and join the revolutionary ranks. This is how his inherent nature was distorted and defiled. He became a vicious killer who began spreading evil wherever he went.

When Jiefang arrived in Nanke, the first person he converted was Yin Huaide. Yin Huaide came from a poor home and was struggling to make ends meet. He had some bad habits, but there was goodness in his heart. His difficulties and his poverty, however, made him an easy target, and he soon joined the revolution. He still had a conscience and a good heart, however, so he was not immediately willing to accept this version of communism filled with killing and violence. He was even less willing to accept the idea of righteous destruction of relatives, which meant killing the uncle who single-handedly raised him. Because of the bad habits he had acquired, however, and because he himself was also in danger of being killed, he finally accepted Jiefang's evil teachings. Jiefang's propaganda methods were quite complex, including both seduction and coercion. Today we called these methods brainwashing. Chapter 3 focuses specifically on the distortion and transformation of Yin Huaide's mind, and Ke depicts the process in a particularly refined and illustrative way. Yin Huaide's psychological transformation is a perfect example of what millions of other Chinese suffered. Throughout the novel, Yin Huaide appears again and again as a character facing psychological conflict, the struggle between good and evil, one that can ultimately be traced back to Christianity. This is a dynamic, fully-formed character that elicits strong sympathy from the reader.

Chapter 3 teaches us that once a person accepts and believes evil theories based on violence and murder promoted by an evil organization, they can be easily manipulated by the leader of this organization to kill without hesitation. This leads to the organized mass murder that occurs in chapter

Four

Chapter 4 deals with the struggle between good and evil. Evil is triumphant and results in a series of heinous acts. Throughout this chapter, however, good people gather together in weaker, more vulnerable groups and continue to fight.

In this chapter, it is not individuals who are committing evil but rather entire groups who have seized power and used it to spread terror. Yin Anding, a benevolent man who was killed in this struggle, used his last words to sum this up perfectly. The scenes in which these vicious groups torture good people are horrifically brutal. It is no wonder the reader feels an overwhelming sense of respect and awe when Aunt Li is still resourceful enough to do good and help others. Her character provides a tiny sliver of hope, a ray of light in the darkness of violence and destruction. One could imagine Ke writing these scenes with a trembling hand, overwhelmed by pain and anger. The depiction of both the characters and the events are so subtle and realistic they could only have come from personal experience.

When an individual kills, they fear punishment from the law, from God, or from their own demons, and they repent. This person still has hope, they have not yet been consumed by evil. If murder is committed by a group, however, that has embraced a theory based on killing and violence and considers it to be both reasonable and legal, then the group will kill recklessly and without regret. That is true evil, evil without hope. When facing this kind of evil, pleading, negotiating, or reasoning are all hopeless. The evil theory and evil system must be eradicated in their entirety before the mass murder will stop. In a typical civil society, not only must the justice system investigate every murderer, but more importantly, it must investigate those who create evil theories and promulgate policies of murder.

In terms of the ideological content of the book, the second and third chapters are like the source, the spring where water bubbles up from the earth. That water begins to flow and expand in the fourth chapter, and it continues to stream and surge throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 3 is the flow of good while chapter 4 is the flow of evil, and joining together, they form a river full of clashing, turbulent waters, one which hides both good and bad currents. In terms of the overall structure, the flow of good and evil begins in chapter 4 and appears again and again, running, sometimes gently and sometimes wildly, through each chapter, and integrating each character and story into their flow. These characters and stories are intertwined, and the clash of their complex thoughts and emotions creates a portrait of the dynamic society and lives of the time.

Preface

Prisoners of the Cave: Love, Loss, and Survival after the Chinese Communist Revolution tells the stories of villagers in a small lakeside town—stories which reflect the reality of social life in Mainland China over a period of five decades, from 1949 to 1999.

What is good, and what is evil? What is wisdom, and what is a conspiracy? What is a good trend, and what is an evil one? What is the essence of Chinese traditional culture, and what is its debris? What is historical progress, and what is historical reaction? What kind of man is regarded as great hero, and what kind of man is regarded as clown and rogue? These are the topics that have always plagued the Chinese people, but they have never quite been able to see them clearly or find the correct standard of measurement. These questions are the main focus of this book.

The author is confident that as long as dictatorship exists in human society, this book has value because it criticizes reality; and as long as the struggle between good and evil exists, this book has value because it promotes humanitarianism.

(First drafted on April 5, 1994; revised on June 4, 2000.)

Volume 1

Chapter 1

Introduction

The story starts with the author himself.

It was October 1, the National Day of China. The school was off in the morning. I took up my canvas bag, walked out the school gate, and headed to my home village, Nanke Village, which was just two kilometers away from my school.

I would be ordered by my wife to do the housework as soon as I arrived home. So I lied to her this time, Writing novels can make big money. I plan to write a novel during this ‘Golden Week holiday.' So would you please keep me away from the chores? Hearing my words, my wife, who had enough fear of poverty, finally left me alone.

The sky was quite clear, no clouds, and the golden sunlight tinted the sky. A classical revolutionary song was amplified over the loudspeaker in the village, singing perfectly to the same scene: The sun rises and lights up the world, and the thoughts of Mao Zedong shines with gold light… The rays from Tian'anmen in Beijing light up all the directions, and Chairman Mao is the golden sun that is warm and kind…

Right at the breakfast time, in came the singing of the bachelor Ke Pingbin with his own version of a ballad:

Chairman Mao, like the sun, lighted up where it shone.

Where there was the red sun, people lived in heat and swelter.

Where there was Chairman Mao, people lived in great hunger.

Deng Xiaoping, like the moon, varied from crescent to full moon.

Where there was the half-full moon, people enjoyed the cool.

Where there was Deng Xiaoping, people had grain and food.

He sang and walked into my courtyard. Uncle Ke, you're home! I wrote another song. Here are the lines. He walked up to me, wagged his head, and started singing:

In Mao Zedong's time when poverty prevailed,

bandits and bullies had no one to rob;

officials had no bribe to take

and they became cruel to the common people.

In Deng Xiaoping's time when money accumulated,

bandits and bullies flocked;

officials reached out their arms

and they became greedy and corrupt.

Cruelty is their feet,

corruption is their arms,

the Great Leader is their mind,

and emperors are their ancestors.

I listened and commented on many good words in his song. He left with great satisfaction.

It became hot after breakfast. I set a table and a chair in the shade of the peach and plum trees in my yard and took the notebooks out of my bag and put them on the table. I sat on the chair, eyes fixed on the pile of notebooks, lost in thought.

Ke Hegui, my classmate, sent me those notebooks and told me the notes were good materials for a novel. I had respected him for a long time, so I treated those notebooks as treasures, reading them over and over again. Actually, those notebooks were diaries, notes, drafts, account records, and newspaper clippings from Ke Hegui, Ke Heyi, Zhang Aiqing, Ke Tianren, Yan, Ke Chengyin, Gao Yunying, and Wang Xuyuan. Most of those people were from Nanke Village, and I knew them very well. Therefore, every time I read one notebook, I would be so excited, and I did actually have the desire to write.

Although some of the notebooks were just personal experiences or family matters, they reflected the change of an era; although some discussed the common people, the grass-root cadres, and the lower-class scholars, they presented the mind of the people in the era; some were just opinions from farmers, no deep theory or governmental slogans; some were just ordinary true feelings, no lofty sentiments or aspirations, and no moaning or groaning for an imaginary cause. However, the content had a defect; that is, it was closely connected to politics. Therefore, it was difficult to write a novel without involving politics. In contemporary social life in China, citizens do not have civil rights. However, everyone is dragged into the community and team led by the Communist Party of China (CPC, or the Party) and dragged into continuous political movements. As Aristotle once said, man is by nature a political animal. In China, the minority are political masters, while the majority are political slaves. If a writer wants to write about Chinese people and stories, political life is an unavoidable part.

This was what I got and how I felt after reading these notebooks. Then I decided to write a novel based on them.

I spread out the paper and lifted the pen, ready to write. But I was stuck as soon as I started. I was uncertain about what to write, and I didn't even figure out a title for the novel. No idea where to start, let alone the arrangement of the chapters. I finally understood the difficulties Cao Xueqin had when he read his manuscript over and over for ten years and made deletions and additions five times. Therefore, I admired the great writing genius among the Chinese modern and contemporary novelists, who could get inspired anytime and anywhere and could produce a trilogy of millions of words at a stretch.

Why couldn't I? Were there any gaps in my knowledge or any difficulty for me to write? I brooded hard over the questions and finally found out my doubts. I had two main doubts: First, I was not a greatly discerning man and could not distinguish between right and wrong on cardinal issues, which made it hard for me to set the main idea, select and use the proper materials, and arrange the chapters. Second, it was also hard for me to decide what kind of work to present to the vast readers in China.

Let me talk about my first doubt.

Li Yu said, An article written by the ancients has a main brain, which is how and what the author tries to convey, and so does a novel. There are differences as well as similarities in writing novels and argumentations. For novels, the writer should first have materials, and then find out the main idea. For argumentations, the writer should have a thesis, and then find out the arguments. Both require the writer to be able to see through society and tell apart right and wrong and set out the main brain. Therefore, it is said that the novelist who has produced great works is also an ethicist as well as a philosopher.

How to set out the main brain is a big subject in the theory of art and literature. Many people have talked about it in their thick books, but their ideas differ. In China's modern and contemporary society, only Lu Xun made the point precise and concise; that is, Obeying Literature. His Obeying Literature has prevailed and ruled the Chinese literary circle for over fifty years even until today.

Why did Lu Xun advocate Obeying Literature? Lu Xun himself said, Neither Liang Qichao nor I deserve the Noble Prize money. I don't think there is anyone in China who qualified for the Nobel Prize. The Norwegians had better ignore us. If they give us special treatment because of our Chinese identity, it will encourage the vanity of our Chinese who will consider ourselves on par with the great foreign writers. The result will be very bad.

Lu's words were not a denial of the Nobel Prize, but a deep reflection of the poor thought and writing of both his own and the Chinese writers'. They did not deserve the Nobel Prize, nor did they deserve to have free choices on the theme. They could only write the Obeying Literature. If they considered themselves on par with the great foreign writers and could create works freely, the outcome would be very bad.

Lu Xun had long been an idol for me to worship. As my age and knowledge increased, I had a puzzle in my mind: Why did such a noble and unyielding man abandon his independent personality and advocate Obeying Literature? Was it because of the great humbleness that he deemed he could not consider himself on a par with the great foreign writers and therefore he did not deserve the freedom of writing? I could not make an improper guess whether Lu Xun was a political speculator with evil intentions. So I decided to pay a visit to Mr. Li Qunheng to help solve my puzzle.

Mr. Li was a senior scholar who had followed Dr. Sun Yat-sen since the Revolution of 1911 and then disappeared in the middle of the Cultural Revolution.

After hearing my puzzle, he smiled. "The question you just raised proves you can still think independently. Some people who study Lu Xun have trapped themselves for a lifetime and still cannot find the right answer. Lu Xun's life and works are all very clear, no need for further research. Only if you think out of Lu's trap and study him for just half a year will you be able to see through him and figure out the answer.

I requested Mr. Li to give a clearer instruction.

Li Qunheng spoke it out, "The idea or thought of a person forms in a process which requires dividing into different stages. To study Lu Xun, we need to separate the early stage and later stages of his thought. We cannot mix the two stages together. The early stage of Lu's thought was represented by Call to Arms [Na Han] through which he was known as a fighter for democracy. The later stage was represented by his works after Wandering [Pang Huang], and from then, he was more than a scholar but a politician, a revolutionist, and a communist fighter as well.

"During the May Fourth Movement, Lu Xun, in favor of the New Culture Movement initiated by Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi, created some valuable works and earned a little fame. However, Lu was not brave enough because he was less innovative than Chen Duxiu. He was not competent enough because he could not compete with Hu Shi in research and study or rival Liang Shiqiu in writing. He was just a utility man all the time. When Chen Du Xiu had differences with Hu Shi and after Chen became the General Secretary of CPC under the Far East Bureau of the Communist International, Lu Xun followed behind. When the Nationalist Party [Kuomintang or KMT] and CPC broke up after the Northern Expedition War, Chen demanded independence of the power of CPC from Stalin, who in response removed Chen from his post.

"With no one to follow, Lu Xun suddenly lost his political direction. Just as Lu Xun said, ‘There is only one person left fighting in this world.' Lu was wandering, looking for political direction. If Lu Xun were a true scholar with an independent personality, he would have kept writing his Literature of Exposure instead of wandering into politics. However, Lu Xun had to seek a political opportunity in combat among different political forces, just like Jiang Ziya and Zhuge Liang who had chosen their masters in that way. What he was going to do was political gambling to rid of the ‘supporting role' and get the ‘leading role.' Lu Xun had a sober analysis of the then political forces in and abroad and concluded that KMT was in good relation with the US from thousands of miles away, but it was a losing battle when rivaling the powerful Soviet Union, which neighbored China.

"Meanwhile, Chen Duxiu went over to Trotsky who had fallen out of power and proposed that CPC should break away from Stalin and give up armed struggle and should follow the theory of the two-stage revolution. It would be no good result. It was Mao Zedong's theory of encircling the cities from the countryside and seizing political power through armed forces that suited the national condition where peasants would rise up and that also suited Stalin's theory of violent revolution. It would definitely help gain the whole support of Stalin to finally realize the idea that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'

"Lu Xun had predicted, ‘It is true that the future belongs to the new-emerging proletariats.' Then Lu's political direction was finally settled that he decided to follow Stalin and Mao Zedong, and so was his literary standpoint. He set Soviet literature as an example and ‘grabbed' the ‘Obeying Literature' to China. He turned his pen into a dagger and spear and killed all the way through the ‘old camp' of Hu Shi and the ‘semi-old camp' of Chen Duxiu, pointing at those who were against and interfering in the great cause of Stalin and Mao Zedong. He also organized the League of Left-Wing Writers in big cities and made himself chief and used his pen to work in concert with Mountain King Mao Zedong's force in Jinggang Mountain.

"When Mao started violent martial education, Lu started violent literary education. When Mao had his iron hand to wipe out the class enemies, Lu had his determination made to ‘beat the drowning dog'. When Mao carried out his military anti-encirclement campaign, Lu carried out his cultural anti-encirclement campaign. In Lu's essays, anyone who disapproved of his political views would be treated as class enemies and would be attacked, even including the ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies,' the Third-type Writers, and the idyllic scholars who could only fiddle with their ‘little curios.' Only the Japanese escaped from his condemnation, and Stalin's dictatorship was praised as ‘the hope of the human,' and Mao Zedong was praised as the ‘down-to-earth' ‘backbone of China.'

Certainly, the shaft of a gun is harder than that of a pen. Only Mao Zedong, the one who holds the gun, can give the final judgment to Lu Xun, the one who holds the pen. Mao won China, and Lu also won in his political gambling. Lu then became the ‘greatest and bravest standard-bearer of the new army in culture.' He was not only a ‘great literator' but also a ‘great thinker, politician, and revolutionist.' He was an unprecedented national hero, and ‘Lu Xun's direction was the direction of a new culture for Chinese.' But if Mao failed, Lu would have lost his gambling. He would have become a clown rather than a great man.

When Mr. Li Qunheng was speaking, he was very calm, his voice very placid. But as a listener, I couldn't believe what I just heard, as if I had gotten an electric shock from some live wire falling from the roof, causing spasms all over my body and my heart racing fast.

Mr. Li sipped some tea, continuing, "In fact, the inventor of Obeying Literature is Gorky, and Lu Xun is just the inventor of ‘Grabbism' [the principle of taking whatever is useful]. Lu said, ‘Without grabbing from others, a man himself cannot be a new man. Without grabbing, literature and art themselves cannot be new literature and art.' ‘Russian literature is our mentor and friend.' The founder of Russian class literature is Gorky. Gorky said, ‘Literators are the ears and mouthpieces of the class.' And Lu translated them into ‘The proletarian, because of their identity as proletariat class, should create proletarian literature.' Therefore, Lu Xun could not be on a par with Gorky, for Gorky had the patent of Obeying Literature and created long novel like Mother, but Lu Xun, who only grabbed, created a novella The True Story of Ah Q [A Q Zheng Zhuan]. Gorky's literary activities served his nation and his country, and he deserved the title ‘the soul of Russia' and ‘Patriot' to him.

"However, Lu Xun's literary activities served Stalin and his puppet Mao Zedong so as to overturn the regime of the Republic of China back then, so his crime was far more severe than the number one ‘Rightists' in 1975 and should be charged with ‘Russian servant,' ‘traitor,' ‘quisling,' and ‘scum of Chinese nation.' It is never enough to sentence him to death. But the then–national government was so coward that they tolerated Lu's speech and activities and even allowed putting a cloth strip with the words ‘the Soul of the Nation' on his coffin. If the winner were Chiang Kai-shek, I'm afraid Lu Xun could have never been Lu Xun. Of course, Lu Xun in some aspects did better than Gorky. Gorky had a bourgeois humanity so that he ‘sometimes could not follow up the revolutionary trend,' sympathized the rich peasants being attacked, and felt puzzled about the cruel inner-party struggle, thus having a ‘mutinous act.' On the contrary, Lu Xun was a brave fighter on the revolutionary front line, who had the very fighting spirit of the proletariat, with no bourgeois humanity, even shedding no pity on Ah Q, and ‘not forgiving' the opponents till death.

"Nowadays it is said that if Lu Xun were alive in 1957, he would have been a number one rightist. These words are from some childish and ignorant people who are not familiar with Lu Xun. Lu Xun is neither Wu Zuguang, Hu Feng, Zhang Bojun, Fei Xiaotong, Bai Hua or Peng Zigang nor Wang Shiwei, Luo Longji, Chu Anping, Lin Zhao, Tan Tiwu, Liu Binyan or Wang Ruowang. The nature of Lu Xun is not a snake drawn out of its hole, but a snake beater who closely followed Mao Zedong. Lu had a good nose for politics and was very capable of avoiding political risks, and he knew how to balance advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, he would never take the huge fame and wealth he'd won as the wager to offer some resentful comments in favor of the rightists. Otherwise, his great name as the Party lifelong follower would be ruined at once.

"After the analyses, the true motive of Lu Xun becomes clear, and the puzzle, therefore, is solved itself. The Obeying Literature he advocated and the literary works he wrote were all sort of disguise, and what he really cared was his personal political future. You will never believe in Lu's many ‘lies written in ink' were actually used to cover his true motives, just as you won't believe in Mao Zedong's beautiful words like ‘serve the people' that were used to cover his political conspiracy. It is sad that the Lu Xun Spirit, the spiritual pillar of modern and contemporary Chinese scholars, does not have any good roots. Instead, the spirit is maintained by relying on guns and prisons.

"Lu Xun held that Ah Q was the representative of the bad roots of Chinese people. But, in fact, it should be the other way around. The bad roots of Chinese people are the spirit of the scholar officials, that is, the contemporary Lu Xun spirit itself.

Don't waste your time and energy studying Lu Xun. Do what you should do.

Having heard Mr. Li's words, I was extremely shocked that my idol Lu Xun had collapsed in my heart. I later checked the historical facts in the time of the League of Left-Wing Writers, which substantiated what Mr. Li said.

At that time, writers from the League of Left-Wing Writers who wrote Obeying Literature were all seeking political chances to pursue their personal political future instead of saving the country and the people. For example, Midnight (Zi Ye) written by Mao Dun was not for literature but rather answers to Trotskyist: China did not go capitalist, but under the imperialist pressure became more colonized [words from Mao Dun]. Writers, who once followed Liang Shiqiu and Xu Zhimo and didn't get a fame, all defected to the League of Left-Wing Writers and followed Lu Xun to write Obeying Literature and gained fame and wealth later. Young students of heroic idealism, who carried out movements against starvation in the KMT ruling area while treated with rice and wheaten food, found it not stimulating and moved to the liberated areas to do the Yangge dance and eat millet and corn food. They wanted to be revolutionary writers as well as revolutionary heroes just like Pavel Korchagin. And many died from persecution in Yan'an. When Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art (Zai Yan'an Wen Yi Zuo Tan Hui Shang De Jiang Hua, hereinafter referred to as "Talks) by Mao Zedong came out, the order" to obey became clearer—the only thing the followers had to do was interpret the Talks. When Mao took supreme power, writers from the Chinese Mainland all became left-wing, and they didn't have to follow the order far away like Lu Xun before. Instead, they kneeled in front of the authority and did everything as they were told.

Yao Xueyin wrote Li Zicheng with support from Mao Zedong, and Cao Yu following Zhou Enlai's will wrote Wang Zhaojun, needless to mention other writers who competed to take a place under CPC. With limited available places, many competitors inevitably conflicted with each other. But it was merely an internecine struggle, neither just nor unjust. The phenomenon that ten thousand horses stood mute in the Chinese literary circle was so infuriating that it was once said there were no novelists but cultural politicians in Chinese modern and contemporary literary circle. It sounded a little extreme because those who wrote Obeying Literature were still writers, some of whom had a profound master of language and literature, but they were cultural politicians indeed. On the contrary, people like Wang Shiwei, Bai Hua, and Liu Binyan, who were unwilling to be cultural politicians and wanted to keep their independent personalities to contribute some works to literature, were killed, prisoned, or sent to exile.

After Lu Xun's death till the Cultural Revolution, there was no such person as the greatest and bravest standard-bearer for Obeying Literature in the Chinese literary circle. Although Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Zhou Yang, and Ba Jin enjoyed a high reputation and were well-known in China, they did not have any achievements in the theory of literature and art. Since Guo Moruo worked as a dean at the university, he had become a brainwashed hero and sharply rebuke the most glorious time of his own; Mao Dun was busy counting his remuneration and busy with his Mao Dun Literature Prize, believing nobody would surpass his work Midnight (Zi Ye). Therefore, the only one who could inherit the title the greatest and bravest standard-bearer for Obeying Literature after Lu Xun was nobody but Jiang Qing.

Jiang Qing inherited, defended, and developed Lu Xun in the theory and practice of Obeying Literature even in a more comprehensive and creative way. Lu Xun advocated writing iron figures and bloodshed fights while Jiang Qing developed it to shape the image of great and perfect proletarian heroes; Lu Xun used his pen as daggers and spears to kill while Jiang Qing developed it into concrete approaches, such as point out, criticize, and sweep away; Lu Xun advocated beating the drowning dog and not forgiving the opponents till death while Jiang Qing developed it into let not one opponent escape by means of ferreting, criticizing, denouncing, prisoning, and killing; Lu Xun invented a new variety of essay, Zawen, while Jiang Qing invented the revolutionary model opera; Lu Xun scolded while Jiang Qing beat… I wondered, wasn't it clear that Jiang Qing's theory and her struggle ways in art and literature both grabbed from Lu Xun and then developed? It was only the times that had changed, where new situations arose, the classes that could be united changed and the struggling target therefore changed, so the former major writers of Lu Xun's Obeying Literature were dramatically pointed as cow ghost and snake spirit on Jiang Qing's Ghost Name Roll. These writers were so loathsome that they deemed themselves as seniors under Lu Xun's pen and became very arrogant and at their discretion accused writers whom they didn't like as monsters and demons and messed the Chinese literary circle and the outcome would be very bad. Therefore, it was right to point out and sweep away those people and let them be monsters and demons and feel the pain of dagger and spear into their skin. Jiang Qing was really good at it, for she could not only make Guo Moruo tuck his tail but also made the turtle Ba Jin hide in his shell. When Jiang Qing was arrested, he cocked his tail and barked, It's a great satisfaction to break down the Gang of Four… Ba Jin also barked with his work Random Thoughts (Sui Xiang Lu). It was indeed a great satisfaction to see the dogs in the same house of Obeying Literature barking at and biting each other, both injured. A lively drama. The right-wing scholars should all clap and cheer.

Jiang Qing was truly the great standard-bearer of the Cultural Revolution, for she developed the Obeying Literature to its peak. She was much better and more brilliant than Lu Xun and much more of an unyielding character. Lu Xun grabbed from foreigners and became the Oriental Gorky. Jiang Qing took from the Chinese people and made the foreigner Joris Ivens look up to the Chinese people and call out Mother. Ivens could not get famous in his country, so he came to China for opportunities. Under the scheme of Zhou Enlai, he followed Zhou's advice and filmed a documentary "How Yukong Moved the Mountains that represented China under the bloody and ignorant Cultural Revolution as an idyllic and mythical communist paradise, thus making himself well-known like Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley. In his late years, Ivens, in his documentary A Tale of the Wind put the young Ivens and the old Ivens in the same frame, crying with grateful tears in eyes, Mother, my dear China!" Another western film director Michelangelo Antonioni came to China to film a documentary of the Cultural Revolution but was expelled from China due to his disobeying and was denounced as an imperialist cultural spy. How amazing the Obeying Literature was! It turned humans into demons and turned demons into humans.

Although Jiang Qing failed in politics, she did not fail in the theory of art and literature, for Obeying Literature were still ruling the Chinese literary circle. Even if the so-called Scar Literature and Reflective Literature appeared later, both were still Obeying Literature. The major writers of Obeying Literature, once bitten by Jiang Qing and got recovered later, together with their followers, dared to criticize Jiang Qing, but did they dare to criticize Mao Zedong's Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art? Did they dare to criticize Lu Xun's Obeying Literature? Or did they dare not to write Obeying Literature?

Since 1980s from Scar Literature and Reflective Literature to the beginning of the twenty-first century, Chinese literary works had broadened their content. However, they did not break through the Obeying Literature. Instead, they broke the Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules. Their mastery of the Chinese language was weakening, which brought crisis to the Chinese literary creation. The first who dare break the Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules was, obviously, his royal highness. Chief Designer Deng Xiaoping created Development is the hard truth, in which the word development was used as a noun and stood for a concept. However, development is the unstable status of the movement and change of things, which can be described but cannot be defined as a concept, so development is not a principle. Take sickness and health as an example. If one's body condition is worsening, we may say his or her sickness is developing; if one's body condition is recovering, his or her health is developing. There should be certain perspectives to observe the movement and change of things, so the word development was ambiguous.

According to the principles of dialectical materialism, there should be a soft truth to the contrary. Therefore, it was hard to define the word development here. According to the Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules, hard was an improper modifier, and the sentence was ill-formed. However, because of the speaker's power, the ill-formed sentence became a truth, and all of sudden, the golden slogans were hung up on every street in China. Was there anyone who dared to point out the Chief Designer knew nothing about the logic or improper modification? It proved that the shaft of a gun is harder than that of a pen, and the word of His Majesty overrides the laws and regulations. The Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules accepted by the literators did not work at all. Thereafter, the Chinese writers closely followed Chief Designer, causing huge dust, with not many fluent sentences in the so-called famous contemporary works, even without punctuations. This language phenomenon would be sneered at by the living and ashamed by the late Ma Jianzhong, Chen Wangdao, and Ye Shengtao. A high school Chinese teacher lamented, Language rubbish! China has enough rubbish, and now comes a load of language rubbish. Another Chinese teacher felt very indignant, Chinese writers daren't break ‘the Four Cardinal Principles' or the English grammar, but dare make a big break on the Chinese grammar. How splendid and sad is it! Indeed, breaking the Four cardinal Principles would get one prisoned, and breaking the foreign language grammar would get a deduction in one's scores thus losing the chance to go to a school of a higher grade, let alone studying abroad. Therefore, only the Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules, accepted by the Chinese literators and established by the Chinese bourgeois intellectuals, were broken, and it would do no harm to ourselves and even probably make us heroes in helping emancipate people's minds and reform and opening up.

It was such a pity for the modern Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules to suffer this tragedy as it took a long time to take shape and become a system. As a result, the modern Chinese language lost its foundation, and the creation of modern Chinese literature was to die out.

The conclusion was that the way out for Chinese literature was to root out the big tree—Obeying Literature, protect the independence of writers' personalities and defend the seriousness of the Chinese grammatical and rhetoric rules.

Therefore, the theory of modern and contemporary Chinese art and literature did not clear my first doubt. For one thing, in the literary creation, I still could not see through the big political subject of Obeying Literature and was rather afraid to see the the iron figure and bloody fight. For another, Obeying Literature required that the writing should follow the words of His Majesty, so one should need political tactics to seek quick success and knowledge of psychology to guess the emotions of his Majesty. But I was unqualified. Therefore, I had to stay away from Obeying Literature and seek answers from the ancient Chinese.

Hu Shi remarked on Chinese classical novels, Only three or four of the novels are good ones, of which there are still many flaws. If you look at the writing materials, the Chinese literature has no exemplary value. Nevertheless, it was after reading Chinese classical novels that I fell in love with literature. I read Three Stories (San Yan) written by Feng Menglong, Two Slaps (Er Pai) by Ling Mengchu, and Water Margin (Shui Hu Zhuan) by Shi Nai'an when I was twelve in elementary school. When no books available, I would read three or four good ones over and over again. Therefore, it was much easier for me to seek the answers now.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (San Guo Yan Yi) by Luo Guanzhong, Water Margin, and other novels of historical romance and chivalry could all be classified into one category based on their themes and materials; that is, novels of loyalty and righteousness. They also concerned filial piety and moral integrity as well as cunning and treachery on the opposite. The representatives of loyalty were Zhuge Liang and Song Jiang, and typical righteous figures were Guan Yu and Li Kui. Cao Cao and Gao Qiu were representatives of cunning, and Wei Yan and Fang La of treachery. The characters were quite clear-cut. Because too many heroes and fight scenes were introduced in the novels and most of them were similar, I could not remember many. However, the description of loyalty and righteousness was so impressive that pictures of those details came to my mind even today.

In chapter 19 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms it wrote,

Xuande sought shelter in a hunter's home. The hunter Liu An…killed his wife and served his wife's flesh for his guest. When eating, Xuande asked what meat it was, and Liu replied wolf. Xuande did not doubt and ate his fill. Next day at daylight as he was leaving, he went to the stables in the rear to get his horse. When passing through the kitchen, he saw the dead body of a woman lying on the table, flesh of one arm cut away. Quite shocked, he then knew what he had eaten the night before was.… Liu An told Xuande that he intended to follow his cause, but he could not travel afar because he had to look after his old mother. Xuande thanked him and left.

Luo Guanzhong had a clear purpose when introducing Liu An into his works. The loyalty and righteousness of him did not come from political motives but from the traditional loyal and righteous education he received during his growth. It was simple, pure, and real. I was only fourteen when I read this chapter. I did not have genes of traditional loyalty and righteousness, and I was inborn with a kind heart. So I was terrified then and even today and felt sad for the wife and Liu An.

In chapter 118 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it wrote Liu Shan's surrender to Wei, and his son Liu Chen, prince of Beidi, was loyal to his kingdom and determined to commit suicide rather than surrender. Liu Chen's wife replied,

How worthy; how worthy! And if my lord must die, I, thy handmaid, prays that she may die first. Then my Prince depart. Thereupon she dashed herself against a pillar, and so she died. Then Liu Chen slew his three sons, cut off his wife's head and went to the Temple of the First Ruler.… Then he wept sorely till his eyes ran blood, and he committed suicide.

Luo Guanzhong must be quite emotional at this time, and he wrote a poem to praise his noble deed,

Both king and courtiers, willing, bowed the knee,

One son alone was grieved and would not live.

The western kingdom fell to rise no more,

A noble prince stood forth, for aye renowned

As one who died to save his forbears' shame.

With grievous mien and falling tears he bowed

His head, declaring his intent to die.

While such a memory lingers none may say

That the Han Dynasty has perished.

This was Luo Guanzhong's favorite part, for loyalty, filial piety, chastity, and righteousness were all saved. But for me, I was so terrified that I had nightmares for several nights. I dreamed my mother dashed against a pillar, and my father took a gleaming sword and cut off my and my brother's heads to offer sacrifices in Guandi Temple.

Luo Guanzhong made up the story Zhuge Liang's Reviles Killed Wang Lang in chapter 93 to honor blind loyalty. According to the traditional Confucian thought of loyalty and righteousness, one should and must be loyal to a wise king, not to a fatuous king. It is a natural law that the old regime will be substituted by a new one. The political situation at that time was very clear: Liu's regime was already at its end; Cao had the spirit to reform and should take the place of Liu. Wang Lang changed his loyalty from Liu to Cao, which proved he was an innovationist minister who understood the times. However, Zhuge Liang was unwilling to accept the change, still loyal to his fatuous king Liu Shan; he was a stubborn conservative who fought against the historical trend and reform. In the verbal battle between the leaders of the two warring sides, Wang Lang, for the benefit of the country and its people, reasoned with novel points and substantive arguments in a gentle and elegant way while Zhuge Liang, for the debt he owed to his lord for his being understood and well-treated, argued with obsolete points and makeup arguments in a discomfited and irritated way. It was Zhuge Liang who should be pissed off and fall off the horse to death, but Luo Guanzhong made Wang Lang die beneath the horse in the story instead. Didn't he confuse the right and wrong? It seemed that loyalty blinded Zhuge Liang, the embodiment of wisdom, and also blinded Luo Guanzhong, the literature genius.

Water Margin had even more descriptions about blind loyalty. For example, Song Jiang killed his wife, Wu Song killed his sister-in-law, Yang Xiong killed his wife, Li Kui killed a four-year-old child, Song Jiang poisoned Li Kui for fear that he might mar the fame of their loyalty, and Wu Yong and Hua Rong hanged themselves in front of Song Jiang's grave for righteousness…

I often recalled those descriptions of loyalty and righteousness and gawked at my mother, wife, and children, shedding tears. I was glad that my father was not Liu An or Liu Chen, so we were still alive. I still feared that my daughter would marry such a heroic fellow and teach my son not to be such a heroic man and never make friends with those heroic fellows lest he would be poisoned by righteousness. What frightens me most was the simple loyalty, filial piety, chastity, and righteousness of Liu An. It was his simple loyalty that had been inherited and changed its name into simple proletarian emotion, leaving out filial piety, chastity, and righteousness. It resulted in millions of CPC members, the Communist Youth League members, poor and landless peasants during Land Reform, revolution activists, left-wing revolutionists, and national heroes singing out the sky and land are not as vast as the kindness of the Party; our mothers and fathers are not as close as Chairman Mao, and carrying out a lot of great revolutions like killing fathers, wives, husbands and bullying the kind. The loyalty of Liu An was developed into three loyalties and four infinite during Cultural Revolution.

Sadly, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, China's TV series in praise of emperors once again brought the thought of loyalty and righteousness to a new height, of which the typical ones were two TV series called Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. To stick out the theme of loyalty and righteousness, every time a character of loyalty and righteousness appeared, we could see a close-up shot with a eulogy chanting along. The screenwriter and producer shot many horrible scenes just to attract an audience and let them inherit and carry forward the thought of loyalty and righteousness, with scenes like sword cutting into one's chest, stone smashing one's skull, and one's bloody head rolling on the ground then taken onto the table… The screenwriter and producer had much stronger thought of loyalty and righteousness than Luo Guanzhong and Shi Nai'an. Luo Guanzhong, in the beginning of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, quoted the poem Lin Jiang Xian written by Yang Shen, and at the end of the novel, Luo lamented, The kingdoms three have vanished as a dream, pondering over this we can only grieve. The screenwriter and producer and the lyric writer put their whole heart into praising and carrying forward the thought of loyalty and righteousness. It was much clearer when comparing Yang Shen's poem Lin Jiang Xian with Wang Jian's lyrics for the