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Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

What would be the Chinese equivalent of the illiad be? (well equivalents, there are going to be more than one)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

It's about a multi-decade civil war almost 2 thousand years ago & is the oldest of their classic novels and the characters are all household names.

And many similar character types ... Diaochan <> Hellen, Lu Bu <> Achilles, Zhuge Liang <> Odysseus etc.

It's worth noting that while Romance of the Three Kingdoms is set 2000 years ago, it was written in the 14th century, so the context is quite different to the Iliad.

There is some surviving poetry from the Zhou Dynasty, which is contemporary with classical Greece, but I don't think any of it is epics.

I think there's a Total War (video game) series based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I can't say how accurately it sticks to the story, as I've never read the Romance nor played the games [1], but it might be worth looking into if you're into video games.

[1] I simply watched an avid Three Kingdoms fan playing the campaign on YouTube a few years ago as some background noise.

There is but it's just the setting/characters it doesn't attempt to tell the story. In the same way a game of Diplomacy isn't a retelling of WW1.

> almost 2 thousand years ago & is the oldest of their classic novels

Nah, it was written in 14th century. It's one of the earlist novels in "vernacular Mandarin" though.

It's set after the fall of the Han Dynasty almost 2k years ago. It wasn't written until the 14th century & but is the oldest of the "classic Chinese novels" (Journey to the west, Water Margin, Red Chamber) [1]. There are many older classical works like the I Ching or Analects but they aren't "novels"

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels

Best translation?

Chinese here, I would highly recommend the TV series made by CCTV in 1994[1]. There's an unofficial English translated subtitle out there[2]. Cried every time I watched it.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdom... [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nzg2uzV03s

Did you like it better than the 2010 version? That's the one I'm familiar with.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms_(TV_series)

I think the 1994 version is WAY MUCH better, it's an epic. On Douban (Chinese IMDb), the 2010 version got 7.9, but the 1994 version got 9.6 out of 10.

The anime version of Journey to the West is decent (but it takes great liberties with the plot and is heavily abridged)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball

How accurate is it to frame Dragonball this way. Im not that knowledgeable about either Dragonball nor journey to the West but it seems like a massive stretch.

It grew into it's own thing but...

"Toriyama loosely modeled the plot and characters of Dragon Ball on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West,[16][15] with Goku being Sun Wukong ("Son Goku" in Japanese), Bulma as Tang Sanzang, Oolong as Zhu Bajie, and Yamcha being Sha Wujing" [1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball

Read both. I belive they're totally different.

Moss Roberts, and it's not even a question.

It's very dense though and there's like a billion names to keep track of, I only made it through the first ~1/3 of the first volume (out of 4) before I had to give up. I want to revisit one day but I would need some sort of reading guide to follow along with that lets me look up all the character names and who is on which side etc.

I sometimes find it difficult to keep track of all the names in a science fiction book when they're in some invented language (wads Acenta the good one, or Arinca?). It's easy when they have English or English-ish names.

The same happens when reading a book with Chinese names.

An ebook that coloured the names according to their side might help.

It also doesn't help that each character has two names, like Liu Bei is both Liu Bei & Xuande, and the two names are used nearly interchangeably for most characters. And the text doesn't handhold you with dialogue & other continuity clues to remind you of relationships (e.g. "Good morning," said Alice. Bob looked up as his daughter entered the room. - without breaking the flow of the text this reminds you of the relationship between Alice & Bob).

Moss Roberts' unabridged version is the one you want.

Journey to the west.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West

Isn't that the Chinese equivalent of the Odyssey?

I was looking for this comment just to give it a +1. Journey to the West has had a massive cultural impact and it's delightful to see where a lot of those memes originated. Fans of modern fantasy will feel right at home.

I don't think there is anything close to epic poems for Han Chinese. Though China government claims Gesar of Tibet, Jangar of Mongol and Manas of Kyrgyz, are the three epic poems of China.

True, but some of the commentaries to the Spring and Autumn Annals are written in a highly refined style that one could describe as akin to poetry, especially the Zuo Zhuan. Of course this is better described as history rather than epic, but the two genres share similar goals especially for the period.

The literary style of Zuo Zhuan can be described as highly refined if you wish, but not quite "poetic". It's basically a very succinct style of old Chinese. And it reads more like a diary than an epic story.

I'd say Shiji feels more similar to an epic, at least a couple stories in it has an air of exaggeration :D

Water Margin? Journey West? Romance of the Three Kingdoms?

And Dream of the Red Chamber to round up the four great Chinese classical novels

And to round off the six most beloved, The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei), and The Scholars (AKA Unofficial History of the Scholars).

Can you recommend any good one-volume translations of those?

Nope! I have to profess, as an American, my primary exposure to the three aforementioned novels has been filtered through Japanese adaptions (e.g. the Romance of the Three Kingdoms videogames, Suikoden, Dragon Ball, Dynasty Warriors, etc.). I think it would be great for China to take a stab at adapting the stories for an international audience as a game/movie/TV series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Poetry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Documents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Rites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_Annals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Zhuan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_the_Grand_Historian

Dunno, but Monkey ('Journey to the West') by Wu Cheng'en was a great book as I remember. Wish I had time to read it again.

That baffles me. Why do you think you do not have the time? Certainly, if reading the book again is important enough for you, you could lower the priority of some other occupation/task/...?

There are many books I want to read, and even more things I want to do. Then there are things I need to do like pay the rent.

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