1, Water Margin:
Before the publication of Water Margin, there were quite similarities and differences in the content and details of the Water Margin story. This may also be related to the spread in different regions. It is these stories circulating in different regions that Shi Naian collected, selected, processed and recreated, and wrote The Water Margin.
2. Journey to the West:
In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were poems inscribed by Buddhist scriptures in the Tang Dynasty, and in the Jin Dynasty, there were Tang Sanzang and Pan. In the Yuan Dynasty, there were Wu Changling's Tang Sanzang's "Learning from the Western Heaven" and Wu Ming's "Monkey King". All these laid the foundation for the creation of Journey to the West. It is on the basis of Chinese folk literature, scripts and operas that Wu Cheng'en completed The Journey to the West's creation through hard re-creation.
3. A Dream of Red Mansions:
During the Kang Yong period, Cao Jiazu Sun San worked in Jiangning for 58 years on behalf of four people. In its heyday, the Cao family had done four large-scale pick-up and drop-off of drivers. Cao Xueqin grew up in Nanjing and experienced a rich aristocratic life in his youth.
However, the family gradually declined. In the sixth year of Yongzheng, Cao Xueqin's family moved back to Beijing because the deficit was confiscated. After returning to Beijing, he worked as a handyman in charge of literature and ink in a royal school, "Right-wing Religion". His family was poor and his life was difficult.
In his later years, he moved to the western suburbs of Beijing, and his life was even poorer. He is "full of wormwood" and "the whole family often eats porridge and wine on credit". A Dream of Red Mansions was written by Cao Xueqin after he lost everything.
4. Romance of the Three Kingdoms:
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a long historical novel written by Luo Guanzhong, a novelist at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, based on Chen Shou's The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Pei Songzhi's notes and the Folk Tales of the Three Kingdoms. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms can be roughly divided into five parts: the Yellow Scarf Uprising, Dong Zhuo's rebellion, competing with the pack, the three kingdoms' separatist regime, and the three kingdoms' return to Jin. 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.