The Sanguo Yanyi - Chapter 61
Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 4:45PM The Sanguo Yanyi - Chapter 61:
In The River, Zhao Zilong Recovers Liu Shan;
With One Letter, Sun Quan Repulses Cao Cao.
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WARNING: SPOILERS AND STUFF.
Chapter 61. I can't really say I have much comment on this chapter, except that I find it awesome that Lady Wu (the Dowager Marchioness of the Southland and the mother of its ruler, Sun Quan) is like the only person in the entire novel that seems to voice the objection to these guys using women as mere pawns in their games of war and politics. You go, girl. Lady Wu, the east Asian world's first feminist?
This chapter, of course, begins with Pang Tong, at the behest of Zhang Song, trying to get Liu Bei to take the easy path of victory and have Liu Zhang assassinated. Quite true to form, Liu Bei refuses. Ah well, Liu Bei, guess you'll have to do it the hard way. By the "hard way", I mean, go against the sometimes fickle will of "Heaven", and not take the opportunity when it falls into your lap. Speaking of Heaven's Will, it would appear that Pang Tong's attempts to get Liu Bei to assassinate his cousin mark HIM for death. He'll be dying within a couple chapters. (That's a spoiler. You knew that was coming, right?)
Of course, meanwhile, Sun Quan is still playing at politics, trying to get Jingzhou away from Liu Bei. Let the Bugs-and-Daffy or Coyote-and-Roadrunner comedy continue, I guess. This time, the plan is to lie to Lady Sun Ren (called Sun Shang Xiang in the audiobook), sister of Sun Quan and wife of Liu Bei, to return to the Southland, bringing Liu Bei's only son and his heir, Liu Shan, with her.
(Cue the Benny Hill theme here...)
Once again, though, Zhao Zilong happens to be in the right place at the right time to save Liu Shan from being used as a pawn in the struggle for Jingzhou. What would Liu Bei have done without Zhao Yun to save his ass over and over? Well, he'd probably still have managed to get by, but it would have certainly been much worse for him without Zilong.
Anyways, yeah, the abduction of Liu Shan isn't happening. Once again, Zhao Zilong saves the kid, though Liu Bei's wife returns to the Southland, and he'll never see her again. (Except in the afterlife, of course.)
But then, Sun Quan's got bigger fish to fry than fret about how his plan failed to get him Jingzhou. For about that time, Cao Cao decided to attack the Southland.
The novel (this version, anyways) focuses upon the rivalry between Liu Bei and Cao Cao, so sometimes the action involving Sun Quan's Wu is somewhat underrated, but perhaps it shouldn't be. Some of the more entertaining battles in the entire book involve Wu as a participant. Not only the Great Battle of Chi Bi, but also the multiple battles at He Fei and RuXu Kou. To me, they're entertaining because, usually, Sun Quan gets his ass kicked (having never fully learned the lesson that the deaths of Song Qian and Taishi Ci at the first battle of He Fei should have taught him: that he is a great civil leader, but not much of a leader of armies, and should probably leave his armies to the Grand Commanders to lead).
This time, though, at the first battle of Ru Xu Kou, Sun Quan manages to avoid the Asswhuppin', and actually manages to thwart Cao Cao's advance into the Southland. I have to give Sun Quan some props for that. Cao Cao was one of the three foremost military thinkers of the age (the others being Zhuge Liang and Cao Cao's subordinate and eventual usurper, Sima Yi), and for Sun Quan to even manage to fight Cao Cao to a draw was quite an accomplishment, considering that such was a thing not even Yuan Shao, Lu Bu, Yuan Shu, Ma Chao, and Zhang Lu were not able to do.
Of course, it's a letter which sends Cao Cao packing, back into the north, this time. Isn't it always? You know, eventually, they always have the peace conference. Sort of makes you wonder why it is that they rarely bother to just...you know...talk things out FIRST before they even bother to have the war?
Anyways, one thing about this chapter. This and the few chapters that follow it have pronunciations that might possibly be more correct, such as "Sun Ch-u-an" instead of "Sun K-wan", but I decided later on that, since I had been pronouncing these names wrong for the first 60 chapters anyways, I might as well go ahead and pronounce them wrong for the rest of the story. So, sorry for the jarring change of pronunciation that mark this and the few chapters which follow it, but it was pretty much me trying to figure out if I were going to change the pronunciation so as to be more accurate (which I ended up deciding against because...meh...I originally started making this audiobook for my own enjoyment anyways, and I don't particularly care too much how it's pronounced when I'm listening to it. I know how the names are spelled, at any rate, and I know who they were and what they did, regardless of how their names were pronounced, so it didn't really seem like it was worth the effort to go back and essentially remake all the previous chapters just to reflect the new, proper pronunciations.) Besides which, I still pronounce shit wrong anyways. Did you know the "Ce" in "Sun Ce" was actually supposed to be pronounced "Sun Suh"? I didn't, until fairly recently...I'm sure you can see my position here...
Anyways, enough yapping. Here's Chapter 61. Enjoy. djraspe.com, y'alls.
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