The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, formerly known as Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is a famous historical novel, which was written by Luo Guanzhong based on the folk stories of the Three Kingdoms and the historical work The History of the Three Kingdoms. Luo Guanzhong was born in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. The novel mainly tells the story of Cao Cao, Sun Quan and Liu Bei's separatist regime: attacking Zhujiazhuang (one of the water margin stories) and forming a tripartite confrontation among the three countries. It is China's first chapter-by-chapter historical novel.
Water Margin, also known as water margin loyalty, appeared almost at the same time as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This is a novel adapted by Shi Naian according to the story of Sung River Uprising in the late Northern Song Dynasty. With the theme of "officials forcing the people to revolt", the novel describes the story of the heroic uprising in Liangshan 108, Shui Bo, exposes the cruelty and decay of the feudal rulers, and praises the heroic behavior of the heroes in eliminating violence.
The Journey to the West was made by Wu Cheng'en, an Amin, who combined the story of Tang Priest's scriptures with folklore. The novel describes the story that the Monkey King, who once made a scene in heaven, escorted Tang Priest and his disciples to the Western Heaven to learn Buddhist scriptures. After eighty-one difficulties, he finally got the true scriptures. The Journey to the West is a famous long fairy tale in China, with rich imagination, wonderful story and vivid language.
A Dream of Red Mansions, also known as the Story of the Stone, consists of 120 chapters. Cao Xueqin of A Qing Dynasty wrote the first 80 chapters, and Gao E continued to write the second 40 chapters. Based on the love tragedy of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, this novel describes the decline of four feudal bureaucrats, Jia, Wang, Shi and Xue, especially the Jia family, exposes the evils of feudal rulers and explains the historical fate of the inevitable decline of feudal dynasties. A Dream of Red Mansions is a novel with the best combination of artistry and ideology in China's classical literature and a great realistic masterpiece in China's literature.
"Four Great Classical Novels" and some excellent novels in this period all reflect the life at that time, which has certain practical significance.