The Story of the Water Margin

Luo Guanzhong is also presumed to be the author of another Chinese best-known novel，The Story ofthe Water Mar-gin while some people attributes the book to Shi Naian ，the great master and teacher of Luo Guanzhong.This is not contradictory.They were，actually，the final compilers of the collective work.Like the story of the Three Kingdoms，“Romance was not built in a day.”nor was it written by any single person.Shi Naian was the teacher of Luo Guanzhong，so some peole believe that the two Romance masters worked together to have accomplished the wonderful novel.

The work is a semi-historical collection of stories about aband of enlightened outlaws-social and political dissenters whose exploits were recorded in official dynastic history.

The Story of the Water Margin is well-known as one of the four greatest Chinese novels in history，the other three being The Romance ofthe Three Kingdoms，Pilgrims to the West and the one written later in the Qing Dynasty:A Dream in the Red Chambers.

The Story ofthe Water Margin tells stories of a group of heroes，who stand for different classes of people daring tostruggle against the evil.There are 105 men and 3 women in all，who are oppressed by the corrupt and unjust officials andthen rise up.These stories take place at the end of the North Song period，describing various vivid pictures of farmers’uprising full of love and hate，ties of friendship，kind and enmity，etc.

The heroes do lots of good deeds to help the poor by punishing the evils.But later，they surrender themselves to the court，obeying to fight the Liao，the Barbarian invaders in the north.Then they are sent to fight with Fang La ，another group of rebels in the South.Finally，most of them die or hurt badly.There are some very famous typical figures in the novel:Lin Chong ，Lu Zhishen ，WuSong ，Song Jiang ，Li Kui ，Pan Jinlian and so on，and each of them has a very strong nickname to show their personality.

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