Like reading? Interested in Chinese classical novels? Have a look at the following four books which are we known to most Chinese as Four Masterpieces.
The Water Margin
The Water Margin, also known as All Men Are Brothers in Pearl Buck's translation, Shui Hu Zhuan in Chinese, is along chapter novel with the Song Jiang Uprising in the late Northern Song Dynasty as the main background and type of heroic legend. It is an immortal (不朽的) novel and has inspired many storytellers. The author of the novel is generally regarded as Shi Nai'an (1296~1371).
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the first full-length historical romance novel in China. Its author is Luo Guan zhong (about 1330~1400), a famous novelist in the late Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty. Characters such as Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhuge Liang have become household names among the Chinese.
Journey to the West
Journey to the West is the first romantic chapter novel about gods and devils in ancient China. There are 100 copies of Journey to the Westin the existing Ming Publications without the author's signature. Wu Yuxuan, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, first proposed that the author of Journey to the West was Wu Cheng'en (1500~1582) of the Ming Dynasty.
The Dream of the Red Chamber
The Dream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, is said to be the greatest masterpiece of Chinese fiction. It is generally believed to be written by Cao Xueqin (about 1715~1763), a writer of the Qing Dynasty. With hundreds of persons and their stories, the story is very complex but also very interesting for its encyclopedic character(百科全书式的人物).
