Jin Shengtan was the first to rank popular novels. According to him, he intends to comment on Zhuangzi, Li Sao, Historical Records, Du Fu's Poems, The Water Margin and The West Chamber. During the reign of Emperor Kangxi in the late Qing Dynasty, Mao Zonggang and his son entrusted Jin Shengtan to modify the name of The Three Kingdoms, which was called The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the masterpiece of the first talented person (they entrusted Jin Shengtan's name instead of earlier people to explain some problems). At that time, there was a saying that the "Four Musts of Ming Dynasty" was put forward as a commercial means of booksellers, and then the Red Chamber replaced Jin Pingmei as the "Four Musts of Ming and Qing Dynasties", and the four musts were finalized. "Four Classical Novels", as the modern expression of "Four Wonders", is naturally not too early. Therefore, the formulation of "Four Great Classical Novels" (the four fantastic books) must have appeared after the book A Dream of Red Mansions was written.

However, some people have verified that the statement of "Four Wonder Books" should have been established in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. Li Yu once said in the preface to The Romance of the Three Kingdoms published in Zuitang: "Feng Menglong also has four wonderful books, namely The Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Jin Ping Mei. ..... "It can be seen that in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Feng Menglong had formulated the four wonderful books mentioned by Li Yucheng and published them as the" first wonderful book "in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so the reference to the" four wonderful books "has been quite fixed and popular. But in any case, the expression of "Four Wonder Books" is the original expression of "Four Classical Novels", which should be confirmed.

Now the four classic novels are recognized as: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, The Journey to the West and A Dream of Red Mansions.

The four classic novels are valuable cultural heritages shared by China and even all mankind, which have far-reaching influence in the whole Chinese world. Mao Zedong once said: "A child is like Zhong, a child is like Lu Da, and he is confident to be like Tang Priest and learn from Four Great Classical Novels." Studying China and the four classical novels is a sea of wisdom to browse China's classical literature and a knowledge base to experience China's traditional humanities, society, ethics, history, geography, folklore, psychology and handling strategies.