The Water Margin occupies a very important position in the history of China's novels, firstly because of its profound ideological value. The author takes The 108th General of Liangshan as the center, takes the occurrence, development, climax, decline and failure of Liangshan Uprising as the core, touches all aspects of social life from bad monarch to courtiers to rural tenants, from cities to rural areas, reveals the darkness of social reality, and reflects the sharp class contradictions and class struggles in feudal society from prosperity to decline.

The achievements of Water Margin are various, such as a major breakthrough in the art of writing people. There are more than 800 famous people with surnames in the book. By means of comparison, action performance and detailed description, the author has created many vivid characters, such as Lu, Lin Chong and jy, which are well known to women and children. The artistic expression of novels is very rich, both realistic and romantic. Structurally, it is a bamboo serpentine serial structure, and the book is a unified whole, and each part has its relative independence. The character language in the novel "enables readers to see people by words" (Lu Xun's language), and the narrative language and description language are vivid, simple and concise.

The Water Margin is an epic of China's ancient peasant uprising, and it is a unique artistic wonder in China's classical novels.