Three Kingdoms Culture

The Three Kingdoms period is woven into Chengdu's identity in a way unusual even for a Chinese city comfortable with long historical memory. Wuhou Shrine commemorates Zhuge Liang (Kong Ming), the strategist of Shu Han, and its adjacent tomb is believed to be that of Liu Bei, the kingdom's founder. The complex is large, well-maintained, and genuinely atmospheric.

For visitors familiar with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the museum sections cover the historical record versus the literary elaboration. For those coming to it fresh, the architectural settings — red walls, stele-lined avenues, incense-filled temple halls — are pleasurable independent of the historical content. The Jinli Ancient Street begins immediately outside the shrine gates.

things to do sight
A story
The Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD) left a disproportionate mark on Chinese culture for a civil war that lasted less than 60 years. The epic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written 1,000 years after the events it describes, is one of the most influential works of Chinese literature and is still studied in schools. Chengdu was the capital of Shu Han, one of the three kingdoms, ruled by Liu Bei with the strategist Zhuge Liang at his right hand. The city's relationship to this history is both genuine (the tombs and shrines are real) and romantically embellished (the novel invented much of what people now believe).

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