''Sanguozhi Pinghua'' (), or ''Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language'', published anonymously in the

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...

, sometime between 1321 and 1323. It contains stories of the

Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu dominated China from AD 220 to 280 following the end of the Han dynasty. This period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and followed by the Jin dynasty (266–420), Western Jin dyna ...

period of Chinese history and was widely read until it was supplanted by the more detailed and forceful ''

Romance of the Three Kingdoms ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' () is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 184 AD and ...

''.

Background

The novel was translated into English for the first time in 2016 by Wilt Idema and Stephen H. West. In the Introduction, aimed at the non-specialist, they explain that there had been a group of tales and legends on the events of Three Kingdoms period, define the ''

pinghua Pinghua is a pair of Sinitic languages spoken mainly in parts of Guangxi, with some speakers in Hunan. Pinghua is a trade language in some areas of Guangxi, spoken as a second language by speakers of Zhuang languages. Some speakers are offic ...

'' form, and call this novel a "fast-paced tale" that was to remain the most popular account of the legends for the next two centuries. It was printed, they explain, in a series that included other historical titles. Wilt Idema, Stephen H. West, "Introduction," Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language," pp. xvii-xviii. The scholar Yoo Min-hyung puts the novel in the tradition of oral storytellers who did not read a text aloud but added improvisations to well-known incidents, though classifying this ''pinghua'' as a novel, not a script. Yoo compares this to the Korean ''

pansori ' () is a Korean genre of musical storytelling performed by a singer and a drummer. The term ' is a compounds of the Korean words and , the latter of which means "sound." However, ''pan'' has multiple meanings, and scholars disagree on which ...

'' tradition.

References

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Notes

{{Reflist Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14th-century Chinese novels Historical novels Novels set in the Eastern Han Novels set in the 2nd century Novels set in the 3rd century