Straw boats
and arrows:
not Zhuge Liang?
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The full narration of the video.
In the history books, Zhuge Liang never borrowed those arrows. You know the textbook version: Zhou Yu orders him to make a hundred thousand arrows in three days. He borrows twenty boats, lines them with straw dummies, and in thick fog sails up to Cao Cao's camp, beating drums.
Cao's archers can't see, so they fire blindly, and every arrow sticks in the straw. By dawn he's back, with over a hundred thousand arrows, all free. That's chapter forty-six of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
But open the official history, Records of the Three Kingdoms, and the Red Cliffs chapter has no arrows at all. Take a guess: in the history books, who's standing on that boat? Move ahead five years, to the year 213, at a river mouth called Ruxu.
Sun Quan himself rides out on a big boat to look over Cao Cao's camp. Cao Cao orders his archers to fire, and one side of the boat fills up with arrows. That side gets heavy, the boat tilts, and it's about to capsize.
So Sun Quan turns the boat around and lets the other side catch arrows. Once both sides are even, the boat levels out, and he heads home. No straw dummies, no fog. He wasn't there for arrows, he nearly sank.
It's not even in the main text. A scholar added it in his notes over a century later, copied from a book called the Weilüe. After that, the story got passed down, like a game of telephone. By the Yuan dynasty, in a storyteller's script, the man on the boat became Zhou Yu, and the place moved to Red Cliffs.
He hangs cloth screens on the boat and sails in on purpose. Catching arrows became borrowing arrows. Then in the Ming dynasty Romance, the hero became Zhuge Liang, and the three days, the hundred thousand arrows, the fog and the straw were added. In telephone, someone mishears. Storytellers were different: they changed it on purpose, to make it better.
Audiences loved Zhuge Liang most, so the clever deeds moved onto him, one by one. That's the difference between the history and the novel. Records of the Three Kingdoms was written by Chen Shou, who lived through that era. It only records what happened.
The Romance is a novel from over a thousand years later. The big events follow the history; the details were added by generations of storytellers. Most Chinese books with "Romance" in the title work this way. A Qing dynasty scholar put it this way: seventy percent fact, thirty percent invention.
Guan Yu killing Hua Xiong is the same: in the history books, it was Sun Quan's father, Sun Jian. The earliest version of the story is just Sun Quan's boat, nearly tipping over. How old were you when you first heard this story?
One story,
three heroes
Over a thousand years, the hero of the straw-boat story changed three times: first Sun Quan, then Zhou Yu, and only last Zhuge Liang.
The version Chinese kids learn at school comes from chapter 46 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a Ming-dynasty novel. Zhou Yu orders the strategist Zhuge Liang to make 100,000 arrows. Zhuge Liang says three days is enough. He borrows twenty boats and lines them with straw figures. In a thick fog, drums beating, the boats sail up to Cao Cao's camp. Cao's archers fire, the straw catches the arrows, and he comes back with over 100,000.
The boat that
almost tipped over
Open the official history, Records of the Three Kingdoms, and the Battle of Red Cliffs has no arrow trick at all.
The real event came five years later. In 213 AD, Cao Cao and the warlord Sun Quan faced off at Ruxu. Sun Quan sailed a big boat out to look at Cao's camp. Cao's archers shot wildly, and the arrows all stuck in one side. The boat tilted and nearly capsized. Sun Quan turned it around to catch arrows on the other side. With both sides even, the boat leveled out, and he went home.
No straw figures, no fog. Sun Quan wasn't out to borrow arrows. He went to scout the enemy and caught a boatload of them by accident.
This passage isn't in Chen Shou's main text. It's in the notes. Pei Songzhi added them in 429 AD, copying from other books, over a century after Chen Shou finished.
Passed down by
storytellers
It's a bit like the game of telephone: one person whispers to the next, and by the end the message has changed. Here, each player is a generation of storytellers.
One difference: in telephone, someone mishears. Storytellers changed things on purpose, to make a better story. The more amazing the tale, the bigger the crowd. So the clever deeds slowly moved to Zhuge Liang.
One is history,
one is a novel
That's what yanyi, the "Romance" in the title, means: a novel adapted from history. Chinese books with yanyi in the name are mostly this kind, like Romance of the Sui and Tang.
The Qing scholar Zhang Xuecheng said the novel is "seven parts fact, three parts fiction." The straw boats belong to the three.
Another feat
that changed hands
Sun Jian was Sun Quan's father. The novel gave both feats to other heroes.
Quick check
Why did the straw-boat story move from Sun Quan to Zhuge Liang?
Like a game of telephone, each generation of storytellers passed it on, except they changed it on purpose.
