Journey to the West is the literal d**k-sucking to the Chinese emperor. Like the emperor dies in Journey to the West and in the afterlife, he is given special treatment and guided back to life, because he is the emperor. I stopped reading it after that.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin were also written in the same period (14th to 16th c.) and are also heavy-handed that way. Romance pushes Liu Bei as the perfect Confucianist ruler restoring the Han glory (the same one that ended ultra corrupt and lived in luxury while everyone was dying of starvation from taxes and disasters), while throwing as much shit as possible on Cao Cao the reformer and usurper of the Han, and Water Margin starts with the first half showing a whole bunch of characters suffering from imperial oppression building up a large rebel group, only to turn around and have them say “actually all we ever wanted was to be part of the imperial army, let us beat up that other rebel group led by an evil wicked wizard and die to prove it” in the second half (which is actually the more historical part of it…)
Those are 3 of the 4 greatest classics of Chinese literature.
Journey to the West is the literal d**k-sucking to the Chinese emperor. Like the emperor dies in Journey to the West and in the afterlife, he is given special treatment and guided back to life, because he is the emperor. I stopped reading it after that.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin were also written in the same period (14th to 16th c.) and are also heavy-handed that way. Romance pushes Liu Bei as the perfect Confucianist ruler restoring the Han glory (the same one that ended ultra corrupt and lived in luxury while everyone was dying of starvation from taxes and disasters), while throwing as much shit as possible on Cao Cao the reformer and usurper of the Han, and Water Margin starts with the first half showing a whole bunch of characters suffering from imperial oppression building up a large rebel group, only to turn around and have them say “actually all we ever wanted was to be part of the imperial army, let us beat up that other rebel group led by an evil wicked wizard and die to prove it” in the second half (which is actually the more historical part of it…)
Those are 3 of the 4 greatest classics of Chinese literature.