As a young boy, my father told me stories from “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, one of the four great Chinese classics. For my recent birthday, my wife and I watched the movie “Red Cliff” which is based upon a pivotal battle from the book. For the first time, these childhood imageries came alive for me on the big screen. My primary teacher introduced me to the world of Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf and many of the wonderful characters from “The Lord of the Rings”. On the one hand we have “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” written in the 14th century based on real historical events from 2nd century China. On the other hand, we have from Tolkien; mythical stories of the struggle for Middle Earth. Separated by centuries and the East-West gap, can these two epics actually have anything in common?
A little explanation of China’s Three Kingdom (169 to 280AD) period is needed. Towards the end of the 2nd century the Eastern Han dynasty was drawing to a close. The last of the Eastern Han emperors were weak, the ordinary Chinese struggled to survive and many warlords rose up to take advantage of the uncertain times. An important figure in this period is a man called Liu Bei (note that Liu is the surname). Liu was a poor cousin of the emperor who dreamt of restoring the glory of the Han dynasty. Liu’s loyalty to his friends made him different to the other warlords and he was able to gather many loyal followers. Amongst his followers were great warriors like Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. In addition, he had the help of the military strategist Zhuge Liang (also called Kongming). In spite of having great warriors and the best military mind of his time, Liu found himself on the run from Prime Minister Cao Cao. Cao had an overwhelming numeric advantage over Liu. At the start of the Battle of Red Cliff, Cao had over 800,000 men while Liu and his ally Sun Quan (ruler of Eastern Wu south of the Yangtze River) had only 50,000 men. The movie “Red Cliff” is based on this battle between Cao Cao and the Liu-Sun alliance. Both the movie and the book emphasize several recurring themes. These include loyalty, care for the ordinary people, having a righteous character and the idea that the righteous shall prevail in spite of the odds. While Liu had loyal followers behind him, many of Cao’s soldiers were soldiers of war lords who had surrendered to Cao on his campaign from Northern China. Cao’s soldiers fought because they had to but Liu and his band fought because it was the right thing to do. Although some of the details of the battle had been dramatized in the centuries since the actual event, Liu and his band did win the Battle of Red Cliff. Liu won because of Cao’s pride and Cao’s disregard for people.
What about the “The Lord of the Rings”? Does Liu remind us of Aragon the rightful ruler of Gondor? Does Gandalf remind us of Zhuge Liang? What about the loyalty that Samwise Gamgee showed to Frodo? Does that remind us of the loyalty that Guan Yu and Zhang Fei showed to Liu Bei? Just as Liu prevailed in spite of Cao’s numerical superiority so too was Aragon able to defeat the forces from Mordor. In spite of the centuries and the East-West gap we all desire these same noble qualities. Furthermore, these noble qualities are so important to us that we will give our very lives for them. Just look at Gallipoli in our own time. Australians like to pride ourselves as being a tolerant and a multicultural society. Some argue that we must reject moral absolutes for the sake of harmony. However, rejecting moral absolutes and tolerating for the sake tolerance does not promote harmony. Rather, “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” and the “Lord of the Rings” tell us that we can promote harmony by persuading these noble qualities because these are the qualities that make us all humans.
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