China's top ten literary works include A Dream of Red Mansions, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, The Analects of Journey to the West, The Art of War, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, Notes from Yuewei Cottage and The History of the Three Kingdoms.
1. Dream of Red Mansions.
A Dream of Red Mansions is an earthly novel with world influence. It is recognized as the pinnacle of China's classical novels, an encyclopedia of China's feudal society and a master of traditional culture. Based on the principle of "talking about love and recording things", the novel only follows its logic, gets rid of old habits, is fresh and unique, and has achieved extraordinary artistic achievements.
The special brushwork of "the truth is hidden and the words are told in the village" has opened the minds of later readers and made them speculate for a long time. Around the study of reading A Dream of Red Mansions, an outstanding school-Dream of Red Mansions has been formed. The sales of books have reached more than 1 100 million copies, which is also an estimate.
Second, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of China's classical Four Great Classical Novels, is China's first chapter-by-chapter historical romance novel. Its full name is Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The author is Luo, a famous novelist in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. It describes the historical situation of nearly a hundred years from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the beginning of the Western Jin Dynasty, mainly describing the war.
It tells the story of the warlord scuffle, the political and military struggle between Wei, Yang and Wu at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and finally the unification of the three countries and the establishment of the Jin Dynasty. It reflects the transformation of various social struggles and contradictions during the Three Kingdoms period, summarizes the historical changes of this era, and shapes a group of heroes of the Three Kingdoms.
Third, The Water Margin.
The Water Margin is one of the earliest Zhang Hui novels written in the vernacular in the history of China, and it is also one of the most epic works in China literature. Early editions can be divided into "duplicate" and "simplified edition", and "duplicate" can be divided into three systems: 70, 100 and 120, of which 100 are the oldest.
The earliest extant works are loyalty and justice and Water Margin written by Rong Yutang, and the most complete one is Water Margin carved by Yang Xu and Yuan. The Water Margin is widely circulated, which has a far-reaching influence on narrative literature in China and even East Asia.