Three, Four, or Five Great Classical Chinese Novels
"Wait.....what!?"
This is how I felt when walking along the street and seeing this statue. I definitely did a double take. Yes this is a statue of a man punching a tiger. This statue is in front of the police station, and it's supposed to symbolize that to protect innocent people you must be willing to fight bad people. I choose to ignore the fact that a tiger isn't bad because it attacks a human, it's just being a hungry tiger. As long as the police don't get confused and start attacking people for eating lunch, this statue is fine with me.
This statue did remind me of one of the four great classical chinese novels. I say four, but I had always heard of it as being three, yet doing some research there seem to be five. Or rather there were four, and one was considered pornographic, so it was replaced by a newer novel which had a similar theme, setting and story.
Those stories are....
Journey To The West - The fictionalized story of a true event of a Chinese monk who went to India to get more knowledge about Buddhism and bring it back to china and spread his knowledge. In the fictionalized version he is joined by a monkey god, a half pig man, and a super ugly former immortal. It may seem odd, but if you have seen any japanese animation, or chinese kung fu flick, than you probably have seen a telling of this story. Just the characters are changed around, for example a japanese animation might be about a group of four high school kids each with a super power which must go on a journey, but they encounter similar things to those that happened in the book. I believe this novel has been called the most copied and imitated story of all time.
Romance Of The Three Kingdoms - the fictionalized account of the Three Kingdoms period in which three different "kings" of china fought each other to become emperor of china. If you've ever played a videogame, than you know this story. Most notably if you've every played a Dynasty Warriors game. The novel is so popular that the fictionalized personalities of the characters and their achievements have basically overridden the true history. So much so that one character was made a god in Chinese Buddhism.
Water Margin - The story of a guy who kills a tiger with his bare hands. In popular culture he is considered a virtuous man for this dead and that he saved people, but in the novel he actually only fought the tiger cause he was drunk. This is only the first part of the book, and he goes on to have other adventures, including having to deal with the fallout caused by his brother's adulterous wife, who makes an appearance in....
The Plum In The Golden Vase - The "pornographic" book which is about a scheming merchant who tries to climb the social ladder mostly by using one very wealthy and influential family, which leads to their downfall. It largely takes place on their estate and is considered pornographic because there are 72 sexual interactions in the story. As said before the adulterous wife from the Water Margin is in this book, as well as the tiger fighting guy. Basically it's said that the person whom she had an affair with was one of the guys from this powerful family, so the tiger guy goes to kill him, kills the wrong guy, he gets exiled, comes back to kill the right guy but he had already died from sickness, so he kills his brother's wife instead, then he goes into hiding with some bandits. Whew.
Dream Of The Red Chamber - Is the novel that "replaced" the previous one if you consider the list to only be four novels. It was written in the 18th century so it's by far the newest (the others were written between the 14th and 16th century). It tells of two powerful wealthy families who live on estates next to each other. Over the course of the novel their fortunes and their influence decline. This book is a lot like a soap opera in the interaction between these two households. Also in Beijing there is a fake residence which is set up to mimic the grounds of one of the households in this book. You can walk through the rather large area and see where the characters lived and where certain events took place. The way it's set up with plaques to tell what someplace is and what significant thing happened, if one didn't know the story, one might mistake this for a real historical site recounting a true history. I visited this place with a Taiwanese friend and it was quite remarkable to see how excited she was going around and looking at the various things. It almost seemed like it was her Disneyworld.
