Bromance of the Three Kingdoms

“When we’re in trouble, we’ll rescue each other,

When we’re in danger, we’ll be there for each other,

So even though we weren’t born in the same year, month, day,

On the same day and month in the same year,

May we die…”

John Zhu is the creator of the wonderful podcast “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, where he brings the Chinese classic to life. The project ran to 154 episodes plus bonus content, and there’s plenty of material here to get started while we wait for his next podcast to begin in 2019.

I’m using Martin Palmer’s translation of the book (note: it is abridged), and my plan is to read through a chapter of the book, then listen to John’s episode on that chapter, and hopefully proceed through the entire work this way.

I think it can be slow going with a classic story (in any language), when you just keep forgetting why you care about the characters or their various plots. It really helps (me, at least) to have an outside perspective saying “Oh no, pay attention to this line” or “This next scene is the crux of the entire novel”. With many more years of practice, maybe I’ll be able to come to those realizations on my own. In the meantime, I have kind and helpful guides like Mr. Zhu.

Did I mention he does Lego vignettes of some of the scenes?!