Mao Zonggang Criticized the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Most of the current "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is based on Mao Zonggang's version. He revised it according to Luo Guanzhong's version in the Ming Dynasty into a current version with a total of 120 chapters (about 1664-1666). Its additional modifications and evaluations are based on the "Compendium of Compendium of Comprehensive Mirrors of Comprehensive Management" written by Zhu Xi, a scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, which strengthens the orthodox concept of respecting Liu and deposing Cao Cao, and also highlights the trend of criticism by contemporary people. Compared with the original work, the performance skills and text modification have been improved, but the comments vilified Cao Cao's stance too much. Mao Zonggang (from 1632 to 1709), whose name is Ji'an, was born in the fifth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty. A native of Maoyuan (that is, Changzhou, now Suzhou, Jiangsu). Following Jin Shengtan's practice of deleting "Water Margin", claiming to have the ancient version of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", he deleted and edited Luo Guanzhong's original work, and wrote comments between the chapters, titled "Shengtan Waishu" and "Shengshan Bieji". He also faked Jin Shengtan's preface at the beginning of the volume and called it the First Scholar's Book. This is the 120th edition, which replaced the old edition and became widely popular. Mao Zonggang's version of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has a lot of changes in the plot. It not only adds and deletes, but also reorganizes the review, corrects the diction, and changes the poems. Compared with the original work, the orthodox concepts of respecting Liu and suppressing Cao and the idea of ​​destiny have been significantly strengthened, and the performance skills and text modification have also been improved. Mao Lun, whose courtesy name is Deyin, is from Haosheng Mountain. He was also well-known at the time, but he was poor and unofficial throughout his life. After middle age, he became blind, so he entertained himself by commenting on "Pipa" and "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms". When storytelling, he dictated it, and then his son Mao Zonggang revised, processed and finalized it.