The mighty Yangtze flows east, its waves washing away heroes. But are the heroes everyone recognizes really the kind we so naturally assume them to be? I don’t think so. I believe that anyone who is human must have flesh and blood, even Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, and Lu Bu.
The characters in the books we’ve read since childhood all seem to share one striking trait: the good are especially good, so good that just hearing their names makes you think they would never do anything against common decency, no matter how big or small. The bad are especially bad, rotten to the core. Just hearing their names makes you think they’re responsible for every immoral deed, and that anyone connected to them must be wicked too, deserving to have their entire clan wiped out.
I think that’s a bit ridiculous. It’s not as if a villain would knock an old woman down whenever he saw her crossing the street, or a good person would dodge every patch of grass as if electrocuted rather than step on it. Someone who can hold the line when it really matters is already a pretty decent person. Such a person might still steal small things, act shifty, be petty, or scheme against others, but none of that is a big deal.
My original intention with this book was simply to create different, unconventional heroes. I mean no disrespect to the classics. Feel free to treat this Three Kingdoms story as light entertainment. There’s no need to take it too seriously. Read it on the subway, while slacking off at work, while waiting for your wife when you’re out shopping, or while the kids have taken over the TV. If it makes you smile, that’s good enough.
Pretty good.