The Sanguo Yanyi - Chapter 41
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 3:00AM The Sanguo Yanyi - Chapter 41:
Liu Bei Leads His People Over The River;
Zhao Zilong Rescues The Child Lord At Dangyang.
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WARNING! THE FOLLOWING COMMENTARY, LIKE EVERY OTHER IN THIS ENTIRE AUDIOBOOK OF 120 CHAPTERS, CONTAINS SPOILERS. HOPE YOU DON'T MIND...
So when we last left off, the Cai Family had decided to surrender to Cao Cao. This, of course, has left Liu Bei pretty much surrounded by enemies, with only a vastly inferior force left to him. Liu Qi is at Jiangxia, but Cao Cao would long ago have swallowed up Liu Bei's army by the time help from Jiangxia would arrive. And so, Liu Bei flees south at the behest of Zhuge Liang, and the people decide to go with him. I'm seeing some echoes of the biblical Exodus here...
Of course, a small army followed by an extraordinarily large crowd of civilians is not able to move very fast, and it becomes inevitable that a larger force riding in pursuit with no civilian hangers-on, such as Cao Cao's, will catch up with that unfortunate first army.
Put all that together, and you've got the "Battle" of Chang Ban. Though it's not so much a battle as a slaughter, as Cao Cao, having finally come to understand the true potential of his one-time friend, Liu Bei, desperately seeks to destroy him before he has a chance to get a foothold anywhere, yet I call it a battle because of the sheer deeds of heroism which buy the forces of Liu Bei time to flee. Despite the fact that Cao Cao easily scatters Liu Bei's forces, the officers of Liu Bei are of no common composition. Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang have gone to Jiangxia for reinforcements, but Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun (Zilong) are still there to assist Liu Bei, and at Chang Ban, I think that both these men show greater valor than at any other point in their long lives.
Zhao Yun's act of heroism involves going behind the lines of an enemy army of close to a million, rescuing one of his Lord's wives, rescuing a couple of his Lord's other officers, getting them to safety, then going BACK in behind enemy lines to retrieve his Lord's other wife and only blood-offspring. Then, fighting his way back out through Cao Cao's lines, through several officers and their soldiers, only one-handed, as the other arm held the infant son of his Lord, Zhao Zilong won safety for the child lord, though at the cost of the life of Lady Mi. Such a deed probably couldn't be accomplished today...all in all, I would consider Zhao Zilong's heroic rescue of Liu Shan to rank among the greatest acts of heroism ever accomplished by any human being in the history of our species.
Zhang Fei's career-defining act of valor actually comes in the next chapter, but since I'm talking about the subject now, I might as well address it here. Zhang Fei has, thus far in the novel, proven himself to be approximately 25% strategist, 90% ill-tempered drunkard, and about 200% braver than anyone you've ever seen. Seriously, even people who don't like Zhang Fei have to admit he's got Balls made of Damascus Steel, and they're about the size of beach balls. Now, he demonstrates it in abundance. At Chang Ban, Zhang Fei stands alone on a bridge spanning a chasm, which Cao Cao must cross to strike at Liu Bei and finish the destruction of his one time friend. He stands alone, as Cao Cao's army of almost a million shows up. And he holds them at bay...no, DRIVES THEM INTO FULL RETREAT with only his own enormously loud voice. That's right, he drove off a huge army of battle-hardened veterans simply by screaming at them. This is indeed a tribute to the character of Zhang Fei, whose reputation was so fearsome that none were willing to be the first to face him.
This, of course, allows Liu Bei to get the hell out of Dodge, as the old saying goes, though Zhang Fei would have bought more time had he left the bridge intact, rather than destroying it, as Cao Cao would not have crossed it, thinking that Zhang Fei, or perhaps Zhuge Liang, was laying a trap.
Chang Ban is one of my favorite parts of the entire novel, because every time I read it, I end up with the thought, "Oh yeah, Cao Cao. You messed up now. Should have killed Liu Bei when you had the chance, all zillion times you had the chance. Now it's too late. He's beyond your grasp now..." The thing that sets Chang Ban apart from the other major losses Liu Bei had suffered to date was that Chang Ban, as the last major loss Liu Bei suffered prior to the foundation of the Shu-Han Empire, Chang Ban represents the turning point in the ambitions of Liu Bei. Always before, he had no notion of his own power, his own potential. And so his losses were in a sense trivialized. They meant little. Now, however, Liu Bei begins to see the bigger game, as it were, and his place in it, and if he can just escape the tragedy at Chang Ban, which due to the efforts of Zhao Yun (Zilong) and Zhang Fei, he does, he can go on to build a land for himself, after allying himself with the Southland in order to stop Cao Cao's advance into the south.
"...And the Dragon flies out of the mire" indeed...
Enjoy this, the forty first chapter in the Sanguo Yanyi audiobook, only here at Brookhavenchronicles.com. Thanks for listening!
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