Shi Nai'AnBesprekingen

ISBN: 3-107111-7-11

This is a translation from the Chinese made by a missionary, although the idea that a church man performed this translation may seem strange when you look at the plot and the several themes that occur and reoccur in along the novel. Calling the text a novel is also misleading, as this is more a collection of stories which all end up at the marsh. The marsh is an appropriate place for all of these bandits who are escaping from the law, a law which in some cases they were serving, but which, through bad luck and fate has made them turn into highwaymen. We don’t know exactly how many, but from the thousands that are mentioned, probably more than can comfortably find shelter in a desolate place in the countryside. The accommodation for all of these people are a mystery not easily solved; the intake is forever growing --it seems China is a very dangerous place to live.

The story has different variations: a man who works for the government falls out of grace through bad luck or fate, or drunkenness, and commits a crime that makes him leave his town, city, regiment, and start a life of banditry. Before he is accepted he has to fight some of the bandit heroes; after proving his worth and mettle, he becomes one of the leaders. This happens all the time, so I’m not spoiling the plot. After reading two chapters you can work it out for yourself. Ah, don’t go to an inn, or be very careful in them, as some of them make dumplings out of customers, in a never-ending cycle of guest-dumpling-dumpling eaten by a guest who becomes a dumpling and so forth. Luckily for our heroes, they are saved by the bell when someone recognizes them.

Women are very unlucky in this novel, as only one -with some female partners- appears in a fighting role. The others die because they have deprecated a hero, or because they have an extra-marital affair.

Also, if you are a servant in the house of someone who has a dispute with the hero, tough luck: you’ll be part of a massacre. Sometimes, if you are an innocent bystander you may also become involved -that is: killed violently.

Clothes play an important role in the text, I presume, but I don’t know which. Many passages are devoted to the way someone is dressed; I guess this was very meaningful to the readers at the time.

The heroes, after defeating the Emperor’s troops, would be very happy if the Emperor (who is not guilty of the corruption of the court, no sir), pardoned them, and made them soldiers. This is not such a bad idea, because they always defeat the Imperial armies, and their strategy and morale is better.

There are some issues with the translation: cash is treated as a countable noun, as in one cash. Some verbs have been forgotten by the proofreader and have no -d at the end when one is expecting a past tense. Commas are used loosely in the text.

The Water Margin is a novel attributed to Shi Nai’an and is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature. I started this book early in February and been reading a chapter or two a day since. This is an epic story about rebels, resistance, war, friendship and revenge. It concerns the gathering together of 108 people who, for various reasons, defy local authorities and join a bandit force hiding out on a march-surrounded mountain. While it is an absolute door-stopper of a book at over 2,100 pages, it is not a difficult read and is full of adventure, humor and traditions of 14th century China.

The book lends itself well to reading in chapters, each one contained a story and each ended with phrasing to the effect that if you wanted to find out what or why something happened then read the next chapter. I was charmed by the story and it took me back to the 1990s when I played a series of RPGs called Sukoden which was loosely based on this book, and in many ways my game playing helped me understand what was happening in this book. The challenge to this read was keeping all the characters straight, and understanding the various military campaigns. There is a lot o information included that concerns tactics, strategy, and military maneuvers on a large scale.

The characters were fascinating and many had very colourful names such as The Jade Unicorn, Du Xing the Demon Face, “Cut Your Heart Out” Wang, and Oily Mudfish which certainly helped to identify them. One of my personal favourites was the drunken monk, Sagacious Lu. Although the book is mostly about action and features battles, kidnappings, assassinations, torture and single combat, one character does do a fair amount of reflection. This is Song Jiang, who emerges as the leader. Also called The Timely Rain, it is he who handles the organization and strategy and has the most empathy of all the characters.

The Water Margin is truly a grand adventure story and is a work of stunning achievement. I enjoyed my read of this book and feel it was well worth the time invested.½

"The Water Margin" is the first of the 'great Chinese novels' that I've read and I generally enjoyed it. The story is an action filled romp with a band of loosely associated outlaws who take the countryside by storm in a variety of ways that generally end with a sword fight, sling of arrows or other violent means of dying.

The book started to drag a bit for me in the middle -- the stories about the outlaws started feeling a bit to similar. It picked up again by the end though and made the long months of reading worth it.½

I have long wanted to reread this established classic. The most complete edition I could find in print was the Chinese Classics 4-volume Edition from Foreign Language Press, weighing in at a slim 2,149 pages. Nonetheless, I would call this an un-put-downable page-turner. One of the original Proto-Wuxia novels from Ancient China, which was rich in both history and literary mystique.

Far superior, in my opinion to the other lengthy "Great Works" of Classical Chinese, namely The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber), Golden Lotus, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and The Journey to the West, although everyone seems to have their personal favorite. The mixture of historical narratives with myths and legends is a phenomenon seen the world over, but hardly ever do we find a personal and epic masterpiece to rival this one. Sure, you can find any number of recountings of legends and mysteries, ghost stories and battles throughout Asian and European literature, but not until you fast forward to Lord of the Rings, will you find such a magical, and intimate journey of struggles, and tales within tales, and influential themes, seamlessly woven throughout the breathless adventure.

I imagine listening to these tales in their original language on a street corner, in the fourteenth century, as people once might have listened to Homer and Virgil recite their own vast creations, and the long-lost world comes more alive. Within a modest 100 chapters, averaging 20 pages in length, with constant cliffhangers at the end of each chapter, you follow the story of heroes and villains, conquerors and families, and brothers-in-arms and murderers, for lack of a better term. The violence and torture is often cruel and brutal, but I assume, perfectly accurate for the time it depicted (12th century). The purported author Shi Nai'an (with a credit to the master Luo Guanzhong) was telling these tales at a remove of a few centuries, while at the same time clearly passing comment on his own corrupt and traditional society mores.

The richness of invention and superb and often humorous character detail is priceless beyond words, and I was enraptured throughout the entire book, which took me only 2 weeks to read. Granted, the print is not as small as some paperbacks and the pages almost turn themselves during many of the riveting chapters. The fact that I am seriously considering rereading it after a few years, and remember many of the events it describes (except for the impossible-to-remember-for-a-Westerner names) is an indication of its staying power. Not to mention that the approach and conflicts have been reworked into literature, Chinese and otherwise, countless times. We got a Christianized translation from Peal S. Buck, at least one manga/ anime based on it, and arguably, several scenes/ themes from the films of Akira Kurosawa.

Also translated as Water Margin, with some translations available online, I would recommend buying this 4-volume edition before it disappears completely. You cannot seriously read Chinese literature without running into references to this epic. It would be like diving into Italian literature and trying to avoid Dante and Boccaccio.

Put down Game of Thrones and pick up this book which has endured for 7 centuries.

This is a surprisingly readable book, full of adventure and bandits and battles. I truly enjoyed reading this book. Some of the things in this book that made me wonder were the heroes who kept getting into trouble with the government and becoming bandits, the death count, and the women who were all sleeping around under their husbands' noses. The guy who wrote this must have had quite the wife.

This is an epic Chinese classic about a group of Outlaws who are disillusioned with the rampant corruption in government. They have all experienced incredible injustice and gather one at a time to live a life as an Outlaw in Liangshan Marsh. Although, they're outlaws, they still have honor and integrity and live a Robin Hood type of life taking from the wealthy and corrupt and distributing to the poor (with some for themselves).

This is an epic -- 800 pages worth of epic, and although it was plot-driven, it was a long slog. I found it hard to keep straight the different characters. Was it Li Gun, the Flying Great Sage King Monkey, or Li Jun, the Muddy Water Dragon. But after awhile, I just enjoyed the book for it's general story. It is famous as one of the first Chinese books written that used vernacular Chinese instead of classical Chinese. And for a book written in the 1300s, it was surprisingly readable. In conversations, rather than challenging someone's lie with a 'surely you jest' comment, the language was very colorful, using phrases like 'you're just farting words'. And definitely an interesting view of the Chinese honor code in ancient times.

This classic of Chinese literature is repetitive, and there may be sooo many characters that it's impossible to remember most of them (even using the character guide in the front of the book--though really, the recurrent characters are the ones who truly matter, and even I could keep them straight reading this over the course of 11 months). But this book is to Chinese literature and culture what something like Pilgrim's Progress is to English/American literature. Only this book is from the 16th/17th century. This edition is a translation of the 1641 70-chapter version.

So, though I did not love the text itself, I very much enjoyed reading something that is so important to Chinese culture and literature. I have seen this book/these characters/the marsh referenced in other places. Now I will be able to better understand those references. I am also very glad I read the intro material both before and after the book itself. Fascinating info on how these bandits follow a Confucian tradition of doing right and holding leaders accountable for doing right as well--and how the 70-chapter version (the original 120 chapters, minus the final 50 that apparently find the outlaws back working for government at the end) was put together during a time in China when one dynasty was ending and another beginning. A tumultuous time, and the ending of the 70-chapter version very much leaves the future of the brigands/heroes/outlaws in doubt. Also very interesting how this was the one Chinese classic that Mao utilized as a Communist book, while other classics were demonized.

I am very glad I read this, but will never read it again. Also, I have so many questions about the logistics of feeding 20,000 outlaws hiding in a Marsh. But that is definitely not the point of this book. LOL.

‘Outlaws of the Marsh’, or ‘Water Margin’, is a beast of a book, divided into 100 chapters and coming in at over 2,000 pages. Major portions of it were written as early as the 14th century, and contain a fictional account of real life outlaws from the 12th century Song dynasty. As such, it has its place with Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ and Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’, and in some ways may remind the reader of those works or Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ with all of its warfare, but in many other ways, it’s unique onto itself, reflecting Chinese culture, and one of China’s ‘Four Classic Novels’.

As with other ancient works before the advent of the modern novel, there aren’t a lot of psychological insight or deep observations made here, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. It’s an action story, filled with a large number of characters, with one subplot told over several chapters leading to the next. There are instances of martial arts exploits, such as ‘The Jade-Circle Steps with Duck and Drake Feet’ maneuver, which is flourishing one’s fists in the opponent’s face, turning and walking away, and then catching them with a backward leg kick. There are super-human feats of strength, e.g. uprooting a willow tree, picking up an entire pagoda and moving it, or killing a tiger, all single-handedly. There are characters that may remind you of other super-heroes from the comics of our times, such as Dai Zong with his “magic travel method” resembling The Flash, Zhang Shun, the skilled swimmer dubbed the “White Streak in the Waves” resembling Aquaman (and then some, since he who can stay underwater for seven days and seven nights), and Hua Rong the expert archer resembling Green Arrow or Hawkeye. There are occasional physical abnormalities, such as Huangfu Duan, the veterinarian who has blue eyes with two pupils in each, and Ren Yuan (“Sky-Supporting Pillar”), the wrestler who is ten feet tall. There are also some supernatural aspects, with ghosts talking to the living, or evil spirits inhabiting a place. Lastly, there are Taoist wizards like Gongsun Sheng, who can summon earthquakes, black mists, and sandstorms; they can also pour forth monstrous animals and poisonous serpents in battle, and one wonders why their powers aren’t used more. Of course, the other side sometimes has these wizards as well, including Bao Daoyi, who has a sword called Occult Universe which can fly a hundred paces and kill a man, and late in the novel, a battle takes place in the sky between two supernatural warriors summoned by Taoists, one astride a supernatural dragon.

If violence turns you off, skip this book. There are many double-crosses, instances of false imprisonment, and thievery, followed by brutal vengeance and killing. There are lots and lots of instances of decapitations, bodies being carved up “like hacking melons and slicing vegetables,” and innocent women and children being killed because they’re the family of an enemy. Hearts are cut out, and still dripping blood, offered in sacrifices to the gods. Horse’s legs are hacked with swords to bring their riders to the ground. Rivers flow red with blood. As one character (Wu Song) reasons, “I might as well do this thoroughly; even if I kill a hundred, I can only be executed once.” As another (Li Kui) says, “So I don’t get any credit. But all that killing was a real pleasure.” There are several instances of cannibalism, and by mainline characters. In one, Zhang Qing and his wife ‘Sun the Witch’ use human meat in their dumplings. In another, Li Kui is hungry and realizes “there’s good meat right before me” before cutting off some of the flesh from Li Gui’s leg and roasting it for himself. If that is too much for you, don’t read this book.

There are also a few really nice scenes, such as the glowing lanterns along a hill during a festival with dancers in comic masks in chapter 33. There are references to places such as the Pipa Pavilion in Jiujiang and Xunyang Pavilion in Jiangzhou which still exist (albeit sometimes in rebuilt form), and it was nice to look these up while reading. There is an instance of a classical Song poem quoted (see below), which was a lovely touch. I also liked the half-dream, half-real scene which a character (Song Jiang) has when meeting the ‘Mystic Queen of Ninth Heaven’, as is was so unexpected, and had her dressed in “filmy golden silks, holding a scepter of white jade”, with lovely eyes and a divine countenance. Later she’ll return to him in a dream, giving him advice on how to defeat the powerful Mongol army.

Throughout the book there is also a lot of polite behavior to guests, false modesty, and feasts, along with the drinking of copious bowls of wine. There is also the more utilitarian bribery of officials and guards, which is never described in a cynical way, but instead as an essential tool to get things done. This is a little window into the culture and time period, as are the instances of little sayings, such as “Though you see a friend off a thousand li [a unit of distance], sooner or later you must part”, and “Lust engenders boundless audacity.” There are also little things like armies making night marches wearing ‘stick gags’ to ensure silence, tattooing the face of those convicted of crimes, and medical practices such as green bean powder protecting the heart from poisons, using poultices of powdered gold and ground jade to remove scars, and ‘golden spear ointment’ for an arrow wound.

The book is peppered with salty and ribald language, and there are fantastic nicknames, which I could fill pages with (“Dried Pecker Head”, “Recklessly Rash”, “Devil Incarnate”, “Three Inches of Mulberry Bark”, “River Churning Clam”, “Sick Tiger”, “Magic Calculator”, “Elfin Flutist”, “Nine-Tailed Tortoise”, “Fiery-Eyed Lion”, “Ironclad Virtue”, “Kick a Sheep to Death”, “Flea on a Drum”, “Demon King Who Roils the World”, “Jade Unicorn”, “Ugly Son-in-Law”, “Oily Mudfish”, “God of Death”, “Cut Your Heart Out”, “Drop of Oil”, “Thin-Faced Bear”, etc). One man is known as “Wild Dog” Hao, because “his mother dreamed she was entered by the spirit of a wild dog shortly before she became pregnant with Hao,” and another is “Dragon Dream” Liu for the same reason.

My favorite character early on was the irascible “Sagacious Lu”, a hothead “who gets in hot water and is forced to hide out as a monk in a monastery. It’s with disastrous results, as he has no intentions of renouncing his earthly ways. Another was “Golden Lotus”, the wife of a short and ugly little man who first tries to tempt her brother-in-law Wu Song, and then has an adulterous tryst with a man named Ximen, arranged for by her crafty neighbor Mistress Wang. As Mistress Wang explains it to Ximen, for a successful seduction, he must satisfy five requirements: be handsome, well-endowed (ok, she says he “needs a tool as big as a donkey’s”), rich, forbearing, and attentive. It works, and each day she “returns with a rosy face”.

There are other little bits of sex, you know, to go with all of the violence in the book, for example, “Clever Cloud” in volume two, a young woman who carries on an affair with a monk named Hai the Preceptor. I love the steamy way their desire gradually builds, and how the act itself is described: “He picked her up and carried her to the bed. Then he disrobed her and had his heart’s desire. Only after a long time did the clouds expend their rain.” Later the lovers are described “as close as glue and turpentine, sugar and honey, marrow and bone juice, fish and water, indulging merrily in licentious pleasure.” Of course, the two are eventually discovered, and then executed (which is mentioned as legal at the time, if they’re caught in the act).

One of my favorite characters in volume two was Wu Song, aka “Constable Wu”, who after getting vengeance for his brother, is falsely imprisoned, breaks out, commits various acts of carnage, and then uses clothing from one of the dead men and blood, to boldly write ‘The slayer is Wu Song the tiger-killer’ on the wall. Another was Wang Ying, the so-called “Stumpy Tiger”, a lecherous fellow who attempts to carry off one woman or another until finally given a bride. Lastly, Li Kui, “Black Whirlwind”, who I mention above. He’s an ill-mannered warrior who wields two battle-axes, often fights stark naked, and is impossible to control in his mania to attack, is memorable. The battle he has with Zhang Shun, the “White Streak in the Waves”, first on land and then in the sea, is entertaining.

Li Kui remains a prominent figure throughout volume three, constantly getting into trouble because of his impulsiveness and violent ways. His adventure trying to recruit Gongsun Sheng, getting toyed with by the Taoist wizard and his master, and later befouled with filth by jailors, is a good one. He reminds me of an extreme form of Toshiro Mifune’s character in ‘Seven Samurai’, with the bloodlust dialed up. In one scene he’s asked by a squire to help with what seems to be a supernatural disturbance in his daughter’s room at night, discovers she has a secret lover, and beheads both of them. He then strips to the waist and “flails the two bodies with his axes as if he was drumming”, before reporting back to the squire, who goes into his daughter’s room to see “dismembered parts of the headless bodies scattered all over the floor.” At one point his tendency to get into trouble is so bad that he’s threatened with execution by Song Jiang, but his loyalty and strength always seem to have enough of a perceived virtue in them that he’s valued.

Song Jiang’s story is interesting because despite his character, and his unimposing appearance (he’s described as swarthy, ugly, short, and fat), he’ll eventually become the leader of the outlaws of Liangshang Marsh when Chao Gai takes an arrow to the face and dies in chapter 60. (Chao Gai will reappear as an apparition to provide Song Jian with advice, not unlike Obi-Wan Kenobi in ‘Star Wars’). He resists leadership, trying to give it to Lu Junyi (“Jade Qilin”, translated here as “Jade Unicorn”, though this seems a little westernized, as the two beasts seem different). Song Jiang is a reasonable, generous, and well regarded man, but becomes an outlaw after killing his adulterous wife Poxi in a fit of anger towards the end of volume one. His reputation as “Timely Rain” often precedes and protects him from harm. He can flash anger and is a man of the world, but there is a bit of the Buddha in him when he wisely says of the uncouth and out of control Li Kui, “That’s his nature. No one can change it. But I respect his honesty.” As the book evolves, it’s stated that he’s only leading this band because the emperor’s officials in China are corrupt, and a burden to the people. He seeks amnesty for them, at which point he will give up his lawlessness. However, we do see his cruelty, such as killing a prefect’s son in volume three to ‘help compel him to join their stronghold’, only to have it said shortly later he only does what is morally right. On other occasions, his men will kill entire families, big fractions of a town’s populace, or bind batches of prisoners with big rocks and throw them in the lake to drown them, so it’s hard to truly see them as honorable bandits, but that’s the book’s intention. As for his own men, Song Jiang weeps when they die, and gets depressed when battles don’t go his way. He’s an emotional man who is often consoled by Wu Yong, his military advisor, who tells him “You mustn’t let your distress over your brothers ruin your health.”

Unfortunately, if you’re looking for more positive female characters, you’ve got to go quite a ways before finding one, but eventually, in chapter 47 after 991 pages, you’ll come across “Ten Feet of Steel”, a “courageous girl … who wields two long gleaming swords, and is an excellent horseman.” She’s followed shortly afterwards by Mistress Gu, the Tigress, who is also a powerful fighter. Oh, how I enjoyed “Ten Feet of Steel’s” battle scene and victory over “Stumpy Tiger”, though it is telling that she is unable to refuse when she’s given to him as a bride later.

There is a fair bit of repetition in the themes in the book, one being the drugging of travelers with poisoned wine to rob them, which we first see in volume one. More prevalently, the pattern is that a fierce opponent battles the outlaws, but once captured, is treated with respect (or blackmailed) and cajoled into joining them, which he almost always happily does, and sometimes in a comically short turnaround. The little variations therefore end up being pretty interesting, such as Zhang Qin (the “Featherless Arrow”), who uses his “ape-like arms” to hurl rocks at the outlaws who challenge him, somewhat humorously knocking them down until 15 have been seriously wounded.

One bit of advice I would proffer is to not be intimidated by the sheer number of characters that begin to accumulate over the telling of the story. It gets a little crazy in the last five chapters of volume two, during the siege of the Zhu Family Manor, when large numbers of leaders and armies go at one another in battle after battle. This continues to build as various leaders join the bandits in Liangshan marsh until the end of chapter 70 in volume three, when all 108 are present. At its worst, details for leaders of various regiments are rattled off in large battle scenes, and at its best, the individual stories are told. Just remember that even in those big battle scenes, you don’t need to recall the backstory behind each to enjoy the action, and often if a character is reintroduced for a longer subplot, we’re often reminded of who they are, or you can look them up.

After the 108 outlaws have assembled, they seek amnesty from the emperor, and after a few attempts are scuttled by corrupt imperial ministers, they succeed. In volume four they’re then sent by the emperor to battle the Mongols to the north, who under the Liao Dynasty were a real threat to China. The Tartars often carry black flags and banners, and it’s interesting to hear one general described as having a fair complexion, red lips, golden hair, and green eyes. In one battle, different contingents of their army wear different colors (e.g. “In conical hats of ochre red and robes dyed the color of orangutan blood, over which was chain and fish-scale armor of peach pink”). Included is a contingent of women cavalry dressed in fabulous silver and white. However, I have to say, some of these chapters lag, as battles are on a large scale, and there is less originality.

After defeating the Liaos, they’re then sent south to defeat a group of bandits who have formed under a chieftain named Fang La, another real historical figure who was fictionalized. I loved this description of his clothing: “He wore a high hood of bright gold with turned-up corners and a robe embroidered with nine dragons amid sun, moon, and clouds. A jade belt embossed with gold and precious stones bound his waist. His feet were shod in a pair of royal boots stitched in gold thread with soles of cloud design.” And it’s in battle with Fang La and his armies that the novel finishes strong. To its credit, it shows that many of the bandits suffer the fate that so many who wage war suffer: they are killed in battle. Others die of sickness or retire, and even though the group is ultimately successful, they slowly disband, which of course is the fate of all things. One Buddhist abbot perhaps foreshadows this in Chapter 90 by saying “Alas, all living things afloat in this world futilely howl in mire and sand.” When Gongsun Sheng decides to leave to go back to being a Taoist monk in the mountains, Song Jiang tells him “Our days together were like opening flowers. Our parting is like flowers that fall.” Often when they die, the narrator comments on the tragedy of it all; for example, when ‘Ten Feet of Steel’ is killed by a brick to the forehead, he says “Poor beautiful female warrior, her life was gone like a dream of spring!” There is a wonderful sense of poignancy in these moments, coming after all of the bravado and camaraderie.

In one of the better sequences in volume four, Zhang Shun swims underwater across West Lake in the attempt of breaking through the gate into Hangzhou. After a couple of attempts of quietly scaling its walls from the water, he’s discovered, and dies under a deluge of arrows, javelins, and stones. He appears to Song Jiang in ghost form in a dream, and then exacts his revenge on the bandits in battle by temporarily possessing his comrade Zhang Heng’s body, and then, buff naked, killing their king’s son, one of his generals. In another, Sagacious Lu just sits calmly and wills himself to die to finish a prophecy, writing in his farewell note that “today I know myself at last.”

The novel saves one of the most interesting and surprising moments for the end. Song Jiang discovers he’s dying from slow-acting poison sent in wine by corrupt ministers of the Emperor who are jealous of him. His thoughts are not to bemoan his fate or to seek revenge, instead, he realizes that it’s the pre-ordained time to die, and simply fears that once Li Kui hears of it, he will re-form an outlaw group and rebel, ruining the reputation his group had. So what does he do? He sends Li Kui the same poison, killing him as well. It was a moment which shocked me, though the two talk as ghosts and Li Kui seems to hold no grudges. In a sign of solidarity, Wu Yong and Hua Rong weep over their brothers, and then hang themselves from a tree. Happily, the emperor is told the truth about what happens in a dream, clearing their name, and allowing him to set up the proper memorials to the brave chieftains.

One of the points the book makes amidst all of the action is how fate can be random, how certain events can have all sorts of far-reaching implications to a person and to hundreds of others, of course rippling from there. There are also overtones of it all being a part of a divine plan, for example, as chapter 32 ends, “Truly, the bumpy roads we travel are all part of Heaven’s plan. Can the gales and storms we encounter be sheer accident, then?” There are evil people, of course, but there are also people who end up on the wrong side of the law because of unfairness or misunderstanding. And of course, with the events in the late chapters seeing the outlaws killed or disbanded, we see in it the arc of all life. Perhaps this is why Pearl Buck dubbed her translation of the 70-chapter version “All Men Are Brothers”, though I think it’s quite a stretch especially given all of the violence. A lot of the time it’s people behaving badly – robbing others, bribing officials, and murdering their enemies. In makes for an interesting read though, and that’s pretty impressive for stories that are 500-700 years old. I was thinking that it would be fantastic if selected parts of it were made into a Quentin Tarantino movie, though perhaps I should check out the adaptations that came out of Hong Kong in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Quotes:
On chaos:
“He rode pell-mell northeast, his army in ruins, his men scattered like raindrops and stars.”

On women:
“Good reader, observe: Nine out of ten women, no matter how clever they may be, invariably are taken in by small attentions and flattery.”

On being apart, this poem by Su Dongpo, also known as Su Shi (1037-1101), who I found was also a vegetarian:
“When is there a bright moon?
Ask the sky, cup in hand.
Who knows what year it is
In the palaces of heaven.
I long to go there, riding the wind,
But the cold I cannot stand
In that lofty jade firmament;
I dance alone with my shadow,
As if in another world.

With the beaded curtains rolled high,
The moonlight, streaming through the open window,
Drives away sleep.
I should not be resentful, but why
Is the moon always roundest at parting?
As people have their sorrows and joys, separating and reuniting,
So has the moon its bright and dark, waxing and waning.
Since ancient times, it has always been thus!
If we cannot for long be heart to heart,
Let us enjoy the same moon, far apart!”

Written in the 14th century about events that supposedly occurred in the 12th, Outlaws of the Marsh (aka The Water Margin) is one of the classics of Chinese literature. It’s a collection of folk takes about a group of Robin-Hood-like honorable bandits that set up a fortress in China under the Song Dynasty and go about robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. There are various versions; a 75 chapter version (in which the outlaws are still outlaws at the end); a 100-chapter version (in which the outlaws accept an amnesty from the Song Dynasty government and go on to defend China against a Tartar invasion and a usurping emperor) and a 120-chapter version which adds some adventures.


This was a difficult read; after a while it became laborious rather than enjoyable. One problem, of course, is that it’s hard to keep track of the outlaws; there are eventually 108 of them: Chao Gai, Song Jiang, Lu Junyi, Lin Chong, Chai Jin, Lu Zhishen, Wu Song – and so on. Fortunately the translator usually appends their nicknames; thus we have Timely Rain, God of Death, Black Whirlwind, Nine-Tailed Tortoise, River Churning Clam - and so on. It’s still hard to keep track of who’s who.


In the first part of the novel each chapter recounts how one of the characters becomes an outlaw: tricked by a corrupt official; the result of an accidental killing; revenge for a murder; failure to make a go of it as a Buddhist monk – and so on. After the initial group establishes itself on Liangshan Mountain (also Liangshan Marsh; it’s never explained how it can be a mountain and a marsh simultaneously) things become formulaic: a government official sends troops and a general to suppress the outlaws; the general is defeated; he’s so impressed by the chivalry of the outlaws (who ply him with banquets and gifts and kowtows) that he joins them (since he’s now in disgrace anyway). Another formula is a small group of outlaws set out on some mission; they’re captured by other bandits, but once these bandits find out that their captives are some of the famous Liangshan outlaws, they release them, apologize, and petition to join up


For a group of supposedly chivalrous bandits, the outlaws are pretty bloodthirsty. Li Kui the Black Whirlwind is particularly grim; at one point he annihilates an entire opponent’s household – wife, concubines, children, servants, nannies, etc. When he gets back to the outlaw stronghold he is slightly admonished for being imprudent. Several of the outlaws were cannibals before joining up; at least two pair lured travelers to their inn then drugged them and cut them up for meat dumplings. Although the outlaws supposedly direct their activities against official corruption, their very first approach when things go wrong is to attempt to bribe some officials. Song Jiang, the outlaw leader for most of the book, joins them after murdering his concubine for cheating on him. That brings up another theme – almost all the women portrayed are evil – usually wives or concubines who cheat and are then brutally murdered. The exceptions are Ten Feet of Steel, an outlaw herself (the book generally follows a convention of translating female names), an outlaw warrior; Mistress Gu (one of the aforementioned cannibal couples) and Sun the Witch (another cannibal); thus two out of three of the “good” female characters were former cannibal murderesses.


The battles are formulaic as well. The outlaws meet their opponents, exchange insults, then one engages in single combat with an enemy leader. They use various martial arts weapons – rods, cudgels, staves, axes, halberds, spears, lances, swords, knives, thrown rocks. The outlaw defeats his opponent, who is either killed outright or flees; this disheartens the rest and the outlaws are victorious. It’s almost as if the 14th century author(s) somehow predicted the future would have kung fu movies and planned accordingly.


There are illustrative woodcuts from a Ming version, but it’s often hard to figure out what’s going on. The book could benefit from a lot more endnotes, and could use some maps of contemporary China. This version was published by the Foreign Languages Press of China; the translator is an American who took Chinese citizenship in 1963. I tend to suspect, therefore, that things have been edited to reflect national politics; but there was nothing obvious (the outlaws never use “The Workers Control The Means Of Production!” as a battle cry, for example).


I suppose the best analogy to a Western work would be to Arthurian legend. Everybody literate knows about the Arthur tales; however actually reading the antique language of Sir Thomas Mallory or Chrétien de Troyes or Wolfram von Eschenbach is more of a chore than an adventure. It’s probably heresy to suggest so, but Outlaws of the Marsh would benefit from the Chinese equivalent of T.H. White to clean it up and make it more accessible.

The Outlaws of the Marsh (Shui Hu Zhuan) is the third of the Six Classic Chinese novels I have read so far, and the earliest one: it was written in the 14th century, but like The Scholars and The Plum in the Golden Vase, it is set several centuries before that time, specifically in the 12th century during the Song dynasty – there does seem to be a distinct pattern here, with each of the three novels referring to their particular present only by way of writing about the ostensible past; which is all the more remarkable as the novels are otherwise quite different from each other. (Not in all respects, however, as one thing I have learned from this reading project is that the ancient Chinese liked their novels not only very long but also with lots and lots of characters – The Outlaws of the Marsh may not be quite as sprawling in that regard as The Scholars, but again we get a veritable host of protagonists which make War and Peace look like an intimate drama in comparison.)

There appears to still be a debate about the authorship of The Outlaws of the Marsh – while the author is not (like it was the case with The Plum in the Golden Vase) anonymous, there are several candidates to chose from. The most common ones are to ascribe it either to Shi Nai’an (ca. 1296–1372) or to Luo Guanzhong (ca. 1330–1400, who also wrote Romance of the Three Kingdoms, another once of the Big Six) or, in fact, to both of them, with Shi Nai’an responsible for most of the novel and Luo Guanzhong for its last twenty chapters or possibly just for editing it (which is the theory I’m going with, for no particular reason at all). Everyone agrees, however, that the novel is based on an earlier collection of stories, the written version of a series of oral tales around the bandits from Liangshang Marsh – a point which, I think, is of particular importance for understanding the novel (and to which I’ll return later). And to make textual matters even more complicated, there are three versions of the novel, a 70, 100 and 120 chapters version respectively. Because there is currently no Kindle version available in Germany (or rather, and somewhat bizarrely, only of the final two volumes) of what is the most complete (120 chapters) and apparently also best English translation by Alex and John Dent-Young, I went with the translation by Sidney Shapiro which is based on the 100 chapter version and supposedly also very good. It certainly read very fluently and without the pseudo-Oriental floweriness with which many translators like to garnish their efforts. In fact, I was surprised at quite how entertaining a read this was – one wouldn’t really expect a 14th-century novel to be a fun romp, but this is exactly what The Outlaws of the Marsh turned out to be.

Basically, this is an adventure story describing the multiple and varied ways in which the protagonists find themselves outlawed after falling prey to the corruption of the Song dynasty empire and finally end up as part of a huge gang of bandits residing in Liangshang Marsh, their various deeds and misdeeds and how they finally seek and find pardon with the emperor and go to war for him. It is full of memorable characters, all of which are much larger than life – this being a marked difference to The Plum in the Golden Vase and The Scholars, both of which are realistic at heart, while The Outlaws of the Marsh reads like an odd mixture of the picaresque and the heroic and is also full of explicitly supernatural elements and occurrences.

One reason why the author of The Plum in the Golden Vase may have chosen to take a story from The Outlaws of the Marsh as the starting point of her novel is that we find a similar degree of total corruption here – with the difference however, that most characters here still feel the urge to justify their deeds. The novel is often considered as a kind of Chinese Robin Hood variant, and on the surface this seems certainly plausible; but one only needs to scratch lightly for the veneer of benevolence to come off. The outlaws keep insisting that they never harm civilians or people who did not deserve it – which is not keeping them, however, from slaughtering whole families of people who have opposed them, or killing a child for the sole purpose of persuading someone to join their band. Granted, ethics in 14th century China probably were not quite the same as in 21st century Europe, but I do doubt that the cold-blooded murder of a child was any more acceptable there and then than it is here and now. Another example of the prevailing hypocrisy is how the initial crime of one of the novel’s main protagonists, Song Jiang, (he killed his concubine) seems less and less grievous every time it is mentioned, until the original murder has transformed into nothing but a “judicial mishap.”

In the second half of the novel there is a marked shift from adventures of individual characters towards large-scale troop movements, a shift that is completed when the bandits give up their criminal careers and start to work in the service of the emperor – the rest of the novel then is taken up by the description of two military campaigns, one repelling invaders from the Liao empire and one putting down a revolt. There is no change in the behaviour of our heroes however who not only continue merrily to slaughter innocents, but also have no scruples to pretend to surrender to their opponents, only to then stab them in the back – again, I doubt there ever was a culture or a time when this would have been considered chivalrous, and yet both the former bandits and the narrative keep touting their presumed nobility of character.

Something, then, is decidedly off here – or is it? I mentioned before that The Outlaws of the Marsh is a retelling of an earlier collection of tales, and for my part, I am convinced that the author of the novel is giving his source material a subversive spin. When one looks closer one notices that the bandits’ leader, Song Jiang, is almost the only one that is interested in getting a pardon from the emperor and that he pulls it through only by circumventing or going against the outright opposition of his fellow chiefs. And things do start to go wrong for the Lianghsang Marsh bandits from the moment they change sides; during the first campaign it is merely lack of official acknowledgement and court intrigues Song Jiang and his men have to struggle with, but once they start fighting Fang La and his fellow rebels – who clearly is an image of what the outlaws of the marsh may have become had they not courted the emperor’s favour instead – the death toll rises, and I was getting a strong impression that the author felt a grim satisfaction in killing off his protagonists one after the other.

There seems to be second narrative running along the “official” one, or rather a second, alternative interpretation of events which sees the story of the outlawed bandits becoming a part of the established order not as a triumph and rise to glory, but rather as a decline and ultimately a tragic downfall. This is nowhere clearly stated, in fact it goes completely against what the narrative states explicitly, and yet there is such a large amounts of irritations, off-kilter moments and general inconsistencies between what is claimed and what the reader sees actually happening, that their cumulative effect is to topple the “official” interpretation in favour of a subversive one which strongly insinuates maybe lawlessness is the better state of things. Emblematic of this is the character of Li Kui, the Black Whirlwind who is almost the exact opposite of Song Jiang. He is loud, boisterous and extremely violent, almost a force of nature – and possibly the most likable character in the novel. As an embodiment of anarchy, he seems to stand against every virtue The Outlaws of the March claims to advocate, but ultimately it is not restrained, reasonable Song Jiang who represents this novel best, but it is Li Kui’s untamed, irresponsible utterly over-the-top nature which captures the true spirit of The Outlaws of the Marsh.

The uber-source for all Kung Fu, Samurai and ultimately Westerns: Probably there's no way that a Western reader coming upon this many centuries later could understand all the subtleties, but this is a fascinating read. A combination of the Iliad and Robin Hood, but of course in a Chinese context. A great study for compact character development too. One thing that surely does ring true, unfortunately, is the desperation felt by good men forced by a ruthless and incompetent bureaucratic structure, to leave conventional society and forge their own path.

There are Four Great Classical Chinese Novels? Why don't I know anything about anything?

Okay...yes, and they are: this one;
- [b:Romance of the Three Kingdoms|158771|Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Vol. 1|Luo Guanzhong|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344735551s/158771.jpg|16666]
- [b:Monkey: The Journey to the West|100237|Monkey The Journey to the West|Wu Cheng'en|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347431752s/100237.jpg|96649]
and [b:Dream of the Red Chamber|535739|Dream of the Red Chamber|Cao Xueqin|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320466606s/535739.jpg|523200]

Obviously I'm going to have to read one per year starting next year. Awesome, man, awesome.

Also, I'm gonna want to return to Maija's shelves at some point to look more closely at her non-Western choices. She seems to have thought this out well.

Meghan says Shapiro is well-considered; Dent-Young is also respected (but longer).

A whole lot of fun that rarely slows down.

This is a surprisingly readable book, full of adventure and bandits and battles. I truly enjoyed reading this book. Some of the things in this book that made me wonder were the heroes who kept getting into trouble with the government and becoming bandits, the death count, and the women who were all sleeping around under their husbands' noses. The guy who wrote this must have had quite the wife.

I got the first two volumes of this on sale in the lovely museum of east asian art in Bath last summer and was hooked. However, the best way to get the rest seemed to be direct from the chinese university press - p&p was negligable as long as I didn't mind the overland delivery wait.

Quite a slow start, with lots of random fighting and arguements about precedence at feasts- I liked volumes 2 and 3 best, when there's many silly plans, adulterous wives and great lunacy. Things have all gone a bit military in volumes 4 and 5, though there's some return to individual stories.

Lovely book overall, and great translation

TV-Serie