The Tale of Yue Fei, the Glorious Warrior of the Middle Kingdom

This is a novel about the national hero of China, the general Yue Fei, who lived during the Song dynasty in the early 12th century. The Song dynasty was a country of developed and refined culture — it was here in the 11th century that movable type printing was invented, which allowed the magnificent literary heritage to reach us. The rulers of the country held deep respect for the fine arts (sometimes to the detriment of state affairs), urban life thrived, and trade and crafts flourished. The capital of the Song dynasty, the magnificent Kaifeng, is considered the largest city in the world at that time.
The wealth of the Song kept its neighbors awake at night, and the empire itself was always eager to expand its territories. Wars were constant. Military valor was highly valued, but loyalty was valued even more. Yue Fei became the living embodiment of these qualities. A magnificent fighter and a brilliant strategist, he steadfastly stood guard at the northern border of the empire, which was constantly under attack from the Jurchens. “It is easy to move a mountain, but hard to move Yue Fei’s army,” enemies would say about him, who could never defeat him. Yue Fei did not fall on the battlefield; he was secretly killed in prison, where he ended up due to the slander of traitors who doomed their country to defeat and humiliation. But he remained an undefeated hero in the tales of his people. These tales formed the basis of the novel created at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries by the Confucian scholar Qian Cai, in which heroic epic, historical novel, and fairy tale are intricately intertwined.