Hello 大家好，我们这周因为周末太忙的缘故迟了一天上新，虽迟但到啦！这一期我们来聊一下三国演义，希望大家学到新知识！

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 21 of Weekend English Club. I am very sorry for uploading this episode on a Monday, but I will be sure to upload the next episode on time this week.

Today I want to talk about another famous Chinese novel which I really like, called Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or in Chinese 三国演义 (Sānguó yǎnyì). I have not read the whole story yet but I really like it, because it is about a fascinating period of Chinese history when there were many conflicts and interesting characters. The novel was written in the 14th century by Luo Guanzhong and tells the story of the end of the Han dynasty and the conflicts that followed, known as the Three Kingdoms period in English. This all happened in the second and third centuries, so it was a long time ago. Of course the story uses a lot of drama and imagination to make it more exciting, but it is based on real people and events.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is considered one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature and is quite long. The English version has more than 600 pages and 120 chapters. It is one of the most famous and important novels of East Asia, and had a lot of influence on the literature of the region.

There are too many characters in the novel for me to tell you about all of them, but there are some very famous ones. For example, Zhang Jue (張角) who leads a rebellion against the Han dynasty. Liu Bei (劉備), a warlord who was said to be a great ruler and politician. There was also Guan Yu (關羽), a great general who fought for Liu Bei and was so famous that after his death he even became a god in different Chinese religions. There is also Cao Cao (曹操) who was one of the most successful generals of his time but also a cruel man, and Lu Bu (呂布), who was a great warrior but also a man with an unpredictable personality who regularly betrayed the people he worked for.

At the beginning of the story, the warlord Dong Zhuo (董卓) has taken over the royal palace and the capital city Luoyang, pretending to protect the emperor. He actually uses him so he can be the real ruler of China, but he uses his power to oppress the people. This is why 18 warlords decide to rebel against Dong Zhuo, who runs away to Chang'an and burns down Luoyang. He thinks he is safe there but Lu Bu betrays him and murders him, which starts a long period of war where all the powerful characters of the story want to become the new emperor.

I would like to talk more about this story, but I also don't want this episode to become too long. I wonder how many people who listen to this episode have already read the story or watched movies about it, and I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. I will now move onto the vocabulary for this week.

• Conflicts：冲突（复数）
• Drama：戏剧；戏剧性事件
• Imagination：想象力，想像
• Classical：经典的
• Version：版本
• Chapters：章节（复数）
• Rebellion：叛乱，反抗
• Warlord：军阀；战神
• Ruler：统治者，管理者
• Cruel：残酷的，残忍的
• Warrior：武士，勇士
• Unpredictable：无法预测的，不定的
• Betray：背叛，出卖
• Oppress：压迫，欺压
• Burn down：用火烧毁
• Murder：谋杀，凶杀

主播：Daniel

校对：nan_nan