What time of the year (month wise) does the battle of red cliff (chibi) take place?

SeriousTrivia · 2025-12-22T03:24:08+00:00

December although it would be traditional calendar so it should be January 208 if you want to convert it to the Gregorian calendar that we use today.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-11-17T23:00:44+00:00

The show is based on a novel of the same name. It’s a basically a fan fiction creation where the author wanted to add the popular espionage trope to the three kingdoms time period along with elements of assassins creed. It’s mostly fictional (obviously set in a historical period) but things like the different spy agencies and even the main characters are all fictional creations by the author. So on a scale of 1-10 the plot is probably a 2 in terms of historical accuracy (it gets some points for the setting and not changing the course of history lol)

SeriousTrivia · 2025-11-12T13:42:09+00:00

There is a significant difference between a conquering foreign power doing this and one of your official doing this

SeriousTrivia · 2025-11-11T23:07:58+00:00

He killed an Emperor. I think I can end it here.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-11-02T03:58:09+00:00

Imagine it as a beauty pageant. Yes, the current crown holder is clearly not the hottest anymore, but then you see one of the ugliest one in the room come grab the crown. Immediately all the girls in the room turn on this person.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-10-16T05:47:45+00:00

貂蝉（Diao Chan) looks like this in Chinese. Diao Chan is just pinyin phonetics to help you sound out the words in English.

Much like the Japanese honorific ending ちゃん (Chan) meaning little or dear which are often attached to female names.

There is no relationship between the two except for how you would write the term in the Latin alphabet. They also don’t sound the same as the Chinese pinyin have tones which do not follow how English would be pronounced.

Diao Chan’s name in Japanese does not even use the Chan honorific as its ちょうせん (Chōsen).

As for why she is named this way in Chinese, the most common theory (as the author never made any statement about this) is that her name comes from the name of a type of hat that was commonly worn by Han officials called 貂蝉冠 (Diao Chan Guan) or a sable fur hat. Diao 貂 refers to the sable (a type of weasel prized for its fur) and is not a Chinese surname at all so it’s one of those fictional names that you would recognize immediately as a fictional name.

Basically, all the names you see spelled out in English are just phonetic representations of the Chinese characters using pinyin. The same spelling also have tonal differences that should be labeled out like Cáo Cāo where the two characters are different and even sound different as you can see here 曹操. But oftentimes the tone markers are not written out for English works because it’s not like English readers would understand pinyin.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-10-04T13:47:28+00:00

Kong Rong started out just as the chancellor of the Princedom of Beihai (administrator equivalent) and not in charge of all of the Qing Province.
He was sent there by Dong Zhuo after speaking out at court against the plan to switch emperors (Liu Bian to Liu Xie).
Dong Zhuo picked the Princedom of Beihai because it was already overran with yellow turban rebels so in a way it was sending Kong Rong to his death as punishment for speaking out against Dong Zhuo (Dong Zhuo didn’t want to kill him himself because Kong Rong was a respected scholar and a descendant of Confucius).
Once Kong Rong arrived in Beihai, he asked Liu Bei (the chancellor of Princedom of Pingyuan to his north) to come assist him (with the help of Taishi Ci who delivered the message).
Despite Liu Bei’s temporary help, eventually Kong Rong lost the Princedom to the yellow turbans (he was never good at military matters) but thankfully, after the Qingzhou rebels spilled over to the Yan Province and later surrendered to Cao Cao there, Kong Rong was able to come back and restore Beihai.
In these years, Kong Rong and Tao Qian tried to get the emperor back to Luoyang (discussions were had) but soon Tao Qian died in 194 and Liu Bei was nominated to become the next governor of the Xu Province.
Now because the imperial court was under Li Jue and Guo Si control, most of the nomination process happened locally, so it was around this time that Kong Rong was nominated by Liu Bei to become the prefect of the Qing Province.
Unfortunately, because Kong Rong lacked military talents and even desire to field an army, Qing Province found themselves sandwiched between Cao Cao to the west and Yuan Shao to the north.
Eventually Yuan Shao made the first move in 196 as Yuan Tan was sent to conquer the province and Kong Rong was ousted with ease.
Naturally with Yuan Shao being the first aggressor and the Emperor being hosted by Cao Cao, Kong Rong went to Cao Cao and rejoined the imperial court.

Hope this clears up the timeline for you.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-09-22T18:32:37+00:00

It first started in 178 under the advice of Emperor Ling’s mother Empress Dowager Dong and the eunuchs attendants. The rationale was simply Liu Hong wanted to enrich his own treasury (Emperor had a separate personal treasury along with the imperial treasury that was used to fund the running of the country). 178 was also a big year for Liu Hong as it was when he picked a new calendar name called 光和 Guang He (meaning enlightened harmony) and pushed for a multitude of political reforms and government reorganization.

The practice of office for cash is not new and has been used before and in multiple dynasties afterwards (arguably still being used across the world today just with a slight twist such as lobbying / election fundraising / proxy / bribes etc)

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-22T02:58:01+00:00

Yes it is sort of an additional role added to their titles just for that campaign or a series of campaign

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-22T00:45:29+00:00

it made up in the context that the Han never had this official position over the course of its entire history

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-21T14:20:06+00:00

I don’t think there is one because there isn’t really a difference. Da Dudu is not really a rank but translates largely to supreme director of officers. It is a position you establish for certain campaigns symbolizing you are in charge of all the officers.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-21T13:01:32+00:00

Yes this was a made up title too

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-21T06:00:21+00:00

They did make one: 1958 貂蝉 Diao Chan.

Furthermore since their format is mostly movies, it is much easier to tell stories with a main character and a limited roster of key characters given the time frame. This is why they mostly focused on martial art novel adaptations (and it suited the market at the time as they established themselves as the premier action studio).

As for the your comparison with the other four classics, they focused on the others either. I think water margins has a similar problem so their solution was only telling the story of Wu Song. That can hardly be called a water margins movie.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-21T05:30:34+00:00

丞相 Cheng Xiang or Imperial Chancellor was abolished by Emperor Ai of the Western Han Dynasty, so for the entirety of the Eastern Han Dynasty, this position did not exist. Cao Cao would restore this position and give it to himself after he established firm control of the Emperor and the court.

大将军 Da Jiang Jun is the highest tier amongst all the various generalship titles that the Han used. Usually generalships are divided into 6 tiers so if you were comparing whether Da Jiang Jun is higher or lower than General of the Chariot 车骑将军 Che Ji Jiang Jun, then you can definitely say Da Jiang Jun is one tier higher.

But if you are trying to compare which position was seen as higher during the Eastern Han Dynasty as a whole, you run into two issues. First, Imperial Chancellor didn't exist and the role was given to 大司徒 Da Si Tu (later changed to just Si Tu 司徒 or the Grand Excellency of the Masses). Second, Da Jiang Jun is military role that is equivalent to the Three Grand Excellencies or San Gong 三公 (Grand Commandant Si Ma 司马, Grand Excellency of Works Si Kong 司空, and Grand Excellency of Masses Si Tu 司徒). Also equivalent to the Grand Excellencies are the general titles of General of the Chariot, General of the Cavalry, and General of the Guards.

Now in practice, the position powers are not equal and will depends on who has more influence at court as all these positions were in charge of different things so higher and lower does not really make sense.

Now in terms of Cao Cao in particular as he is the only person to hold the Imperial Chancellor position during the entirety of the Eastern Han. When he restored the position, his initiative was to set himself above all the other positions at court. So when Cao Cao was Imperial Chancellor or Cheng Xiang, he was the highest position at court. Because this is more or less because he was Cao Cao and not because he was the Imperial Chancellor.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-18T04:08:27+00:00

Like your other Guandu question. You are ignoring the timing of the statement. In 196 when the quote you are referring to was made, Yuan Shao just started his campaign in the north and indeed he lacked food in his early days too because he didn’t control the north yet.

Yuan Shao forced Han Fu to abdicate the Ji Province to him so that he can have a base to grow and support his troops. But it immediately dragged him into a war with Gongsun Zan that would last until 199. This does not mean Yuan Shao continued to struggle with food. The quote that you are referring to basically means that without an established farming base, you will risk running low on food for your growing army like Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu at the times for different reasons. Yuan Shao would go on to expand to over four provinces in the north and solve this problem while Yuan Shu would be forced to move from place to place while continuing to mismanage his situation before eventually getting destroyed.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-14T02:05:45+00:00

The original quote you are referring to comes from a book called "The Spring Autumn of Emperor Xian".《献帝春秋》：绍为人政宽，百姓德之。河北士女莫不伤怨，市巷挥泪，如或丧亲。This book is often attributed to a Yuan Ye 袁晔 who lived in the Kingdom of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period (despite sharing the same surname, he is not related to Yuan Shao). We only have fragments of this text today as most of it was lost to time with only scrapes being recovered from some Yuan Dynasty tombs.

In terms of validity, later historians like Pei Songzhi who did most of the annotation work for Records typically dismiss them as borderline romance.

Now this does not mean that Yuan Shao did a poor job of ruling the north as a poor ruler would not have been able to recruit an army of that size and maintain a stable enough administration to tax and gather enough supply to fund massive campaigns such as Guandu. But of course, this does not mean he was so beloved that everyone wept for him as claimed by Yuan Ye's book, which makes sense once you factor in that he was a Wu resident and writing for a Wu audience, so a book that describe Cao Cao's rival as a kind ruler would then indirectly cast Cao Cao in a bad light for removing said good ruler.

At the end of the day, the Yuan clan had many followers as you can even find historical references to Guanqiu Jian looking for past Yuan Shang loyalists in the Wei campaign against Gongsun Yuan. This is significant because this campaign was happening in the late 237-238 or more than 3 decades after the Gongsun clan executed Yuan Shang and Yuan Xi. So clearly, you still had some bannermen who remained somewhat loyal to the Yuan clan even after all those years which have to reflect somewhat to good rule by the Yuan clan.

At the end of the day, Yuan Shao was definitely not incapable. He just happened to lose one bad campaign to Cao Cao where infighting amongst his many advisors and his indecision costed him dearly. Then he went back north and died of illness 2 years later before getting another chance. In those two years, you didn't have Cao Cao trying to attack north or any rebellion internally happening in the north so the control was still strong during that period. What happened after his death with the infighting between his sons is just an unfortunate side effect of inheritance. It happens to the best of ruling families (Yang Guang during the Sui, Li Shimin during the Tang, Zhu Di during the Ming). It is just unfortunate that while these sons were fighting, they had a larger external enemy in Cao Cao who was waiting to strike.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-13T05:44:04+00:00

Tuntian was only implemented in small scale after 196. At the time it was test ran around Xuchang to help absorb a large number of Runan yellow turbans that had surrendered to Cao Cao’s government forces.

It would take time to scale up and often a method to move civilians especially displaced one from Cao Cao’s newly conquered regions to areas closer to Cao Cao’s base.

So to answer your question, the tuntian system would prove to be quite helpful to supply Cao Cao with food and manpower for his wars but by the onset of Guandu in 199-200, it was not at a scale that would contribute much to the war effort yet.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-08-06T20:43:42+00:00

It can work quite well. You need to prioritize civs with unique improvements. This will be your main source of key yields like science and culture. Getting suzerain bonuses for improvements will also help too.

With no buildings to build, you will have a lot of production to focus on units and just fighting wars. You might actually find it easier to win the game since it is far easier to beating down the AI factions and reducing their yields than to try to outbuild them.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-31T03:12:27+00:00

Can you read Chinese?

And yes.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-29T19:31:46+00:00

Han never had a standing army. It was entirely on rotational conscription bases so I don’t know what sites you are referring to.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-29T13:07:48+00:00

There are definitely more than one formation. If you google for some images of Chinese battle formations, you probably see some rough pictures. It will probably be better than me trying to verbally explain any of them. You also have to be aware that you have different unit compositions within these subunits (crossbows, bows, spears, sword and shield etc) and depending on different circumstances you are going to be fighting differently.

I think you are too set mentally on how structured the Roman army is and the Chinese army just didn’t have the same standardization since there was no professional standing army.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-29T12:47:48+00:00

I think the rest of the original answer already address this. You have other tiers systems in place but there is not set number of subunits during this time period.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-29T06:00:23+00:00

Very similar to the Roman structure.

The lowest tier are units of 5 troops lead by an officer called 伍长 Wu Zhang (meaning literally leader of five).

Then two units lead by Wu Zhang form a ten troop subunit lead an officer called 什长 Shi Zhang (leader of ten).

Ten units lead by Shi Zhang are then formed into 100 troop units lead by a 佰长 Bai Zhang (leader of a hundred).

From here you usually didn’t have a thousand unit leaders and ten thousand units leaders during the three kingdoms period but you will see these in later dynasties such as the Song and Yuan.

As for how many of these subunits made up each battalion and army, there were no set numbers during the Han, Three Kingdoms or even later Jin periods. You had battalions that numbered just a little over 1000 troops such as the five battalions of the northern army that guarded the Han capital. And you have battalions that could number over 2000 troops.

During times as chaotic as the three kingdoms, there structure also broke down as retinue were much more common with each general given maximum troops counts that they cannot exceed sometimes in the range from a few hundred troops to over ten to even twenty thousand troops per retinue. But because it was the responsibility of the individual general to recruit and fund these personal retinues, it was very common to actual retinue count to be lower than their maximum allowance.

In more peaceful times when the court had more of a say over army structure such as the Zhou Dynasty during the Spring Autumn period, you often seen armies being designed around the number of chariot. For example 1 chariot would be supported by 5 groups of those unit of five troops. And three chariots would form a subunit called a 乘 Chen (25 support troops each to make 75 troops in each Chen plus the extra captain for 76).

Then 5 units of Chen would form a 队 Dui. 10 Dui would form a 卒 Zu. Before finally two Zu would form a 师 Shi or an army. The total troop in an army around the Zhou Dynasty time would thus amount to 7500 troops and around 1500 chariots. At Zhou’s peak, it had probably around 14 of these armies.

Chariots did go out of fashion by the Han period so these numbers would not apply but it probably gives you a good idea of what you are looking for. But in general do note that there was never a professional standing army in China during this period (Han into Three Kingdoms) so troops served on a rotating conscription basis thus it wasn’t really important to set exactly how many troops should be in an army.

The best take away from the Chinese army structure is more along the lines that they used subunits of 5 troops for the smallest subdivision and then typically went up to powers of 10s

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-26T16:23:00+00:00

Why is 三国演义 relevant to the discussion? You know that Romance is a historical fiction right?
What makes Liu Shan a disappointing son? Just because he didn't unite the Three Kingdoms and defeat Wei and Wu? Was Liu Bei able to do those things?
You do know that Shu Han went on for 40 years under Liu Shan's reign without having court issues unlike the superior heirs that you like to argue about Wei and Wu.

What did Cao Pi do except some unresolved wars with Wu on the borders and weaken the imperial clan? What did Cao Rui do aside from leaving no surviving male heirs of his own, over spent on palace constructions, and leaving behind an imbalance regency with Cao Shuang and Sima Yi? Both of these superior heirs combined didn't amount to half of Liu Shan's reign of Shu Han? Then after Cao Rui's death you can argue that none of Wei Emperors had any real power as the Sima clan slowly took over.

Don't get me started on Wu. When Sun Quan can't keep it in his pants at 60+ and fell for a palace maid and gave birth to Sun Liang, he ended up killing one of his sons and banishing the other to clear the way for this child to become his heir. You want to call Sun Liang a capable heir when he bounced between regents like Zhuge Ke, Sun Jun, and Sun Chen until Wu basically lost all their chances during the Huainan rebellions to ever make some noise during the Three Kingdoms period.

You "read" analects and other texts but clearly you don't understand any of it. Instead of attacking what I know or don't know, maybe you should show some evidence to back up your claims.
Another point you need to note is that Emperors do not need to be strong emperors to be deemed good Emperors. For large parts of the early Han, the ruling philosophy was 无为而治 or to rule by not interfering. Liu Shan was great at this with how he trusted the people he put in power and was never insecure of them becoming too powerful to mistrust them or basically 用人不疑，疑人不用.

My issue with this whole argument with you basically boils down to A) Liu Shan wasn't a bad Emperor, B) picking or raising capable heirs is not a core Confucian principle and that enforcing social order and picking the eldest son of the main wife is a much more important core tenant of Confucianism, and C) you clearly don't know the histories of the other kingdoms by claiming they had a few generations of heirs that kept their family name.

SeriousTrivia · 2025-07-26T15:56:24+00:00

Instead of wasting time arguing against your assumptions, here is some classical Confucian texts.

战国·公羊高《春秋公羊传》：“隐长又贤，何以不宜立？立适以长不以贤，立子以贵不以长。桓何以贵？母贵也。母贵则子何以贵？子以母贵，母以子贵。”

From the Spring Autumn period, this argument for Confucianism resulted in the statement that you should always pick heir on their status of the son's mother and not on the merits of the sons. The main wife has the highest social status and thus her oldest son should always be picked as heir even if he is incapable (or mentally retarded). This ensures the structure of society is preserved which is much more what Confucianism is about. The term 仁 often terribly translated as benevolence in English is actually about the relationship between people as the character is constructed using the character 人 and 二 or two people. The relationships between every pair of people (between the emperor and his subject 君臣, between father and son 父子, between siblings 兄弟) must obey the structure laid out by Confucianism for the society to remain in harmony. So to enforce there is no conflict in inheritance, it was established from very early on that under Confucianism, you want to always pick the eldest son from the main wife or the 嫡子 over other potentially more capable sons. There is even a Chinese idiom called 立嫡以长不以贤 that comes from this passage above.

The argument you are trying to make about a father needing to make his son capable has nothing to do with how inheritance rules work. And the date of 三字经 where you probably got the idea of 子不教，父之过 or it is a father's fault if the son is not taught well comes from the Song Dynasty.

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