Blades of the Five Dynasties

Blades of the Five Dynasties is a series of historical novels by the Chongqing writer Yu Wei, in three volumes, each centered on a figure of the Five Dynasties—Zhu Wen, Li Cunxu and Chai Rong—against the backdrop of the turbulent age between the fall of the Tang and the rise of the Song. The author holds that the Five Dynasties was the embryonic period in which Chinese politics began to shift from rule by military men to rule by civil officials, and that these three figures represent three distinct political types: Zhu Wen is the military mind who acts by force alone; Li Cunxu has a civil-administration outlook but lacks the means to carry it out and ends in ruin; Chai Rong, a military man who promoted civil government and laid the groundwork for Northern Song civil rule, dies young. Volume one, Zhu Wen: The Destruction of a Warlord, traces Zhu Wen's rise from obscure origins, his elimination of rival satrapies and ending of the chaos in the Central Plains, his promise of restoring the Tang's glory, and his destruction through inability to master his own desires, painting the political and military landscape of the late Tang. Volume two, Li Cunxu: The Lost King, follows the founder of the Later Tang—famous from youth, a brilliant commander and a connoisseur of music and poetry—who, having fulfilled his father's command and founded an empire, swiftly loses his way and becomes the "half-hero" lamented by historians. Volume three, Chai Rong: The Sad Song of the Hidden Dragon, follows the Later Zhou emperor Shizong, who abandoned commerce for arms, devoted himself to state affairs, and in five or six years took Qinlong, pacified Huaibei and recovered the Three Passes; honored by later ages as the finest ruler of the Five Dynasties, he dies of illness on the northern campaign to Youyun, leaving the sad song of an idealist. The book is grounded in historical fact and probes the psychological motives of its characters, using prose-like prose to reconstruct people and fate in a time of chaos.