Synopsis of The Rise and Fall of the Ten Kingdoms
Luo Xiaozhong
During the Qianfu era at the end of the Tang dynasty, drought ravaged the land and the people were left destitute. Huang Chao rallied the masses, and the whole realm answered his call. The Tang dynasty’s three-hundred-year foundation crumbled. From then on, the Central Plains were plunged into turmoil. Over the next fifty-three years, the Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou rose and fell in turn, each taking its turn on the stage. In the south and in Bashu, the ten kingdoms of Wu, Southern Tang, Wuyue, Min, Southern Han, Chu, Jingnan, Later Shu, Northern Han, and Former Shu carved up the land. Some clung to their own corners, while others vied for supremacy, as the storms of a chaotic age swept across the realm.
This is an epic in which heroes and ambitious warlords stand side by side: Zhu Wen betrays Qi and usurps the Tang, Li Keyong leaves behind the regret of three arrows, Li Cunxu avenges his humiliation and destroys Later Liang, the valiant Chai Rong expands his territory, and Zhao Kuangyin launches the Chenqiao mutiny. There are also loyal ministers and fierce generals who meet death with courage, treacherous schemers who throw the government into chaos and ruin the state, and extraordinary tales of Li Yu, whose poetry surpasses all others, and Qian Liu, who protects his lands and brings peace to the people. The book depicts both the clash of armies at the battles of Baixiang and Gaoping and the treachery of court intrigue, as well as the sorrowful songs of a chaotic age in which the people suffer untold misery.
Guided by history and told in more than five hundred chapters of plain prose, the book recounts a century of conflict, from Huang Chao’s uprising to the Song conquest of Northern Han, restoring the divisions and reunification, loyalty and betrayal, prosperity and collapse of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. It combines the sweeping grandeur of Romance of the Three Kingdoms with nuanced portraits of the many figures caught in a chaotic age, distilling that tumultuous history of rival powers into an immortal song of dynastic rise and fall, and the people’s shifting loyalties.
