One of my favorite clips: Liu Bei and Cao Cao debating one another as part of Three Kingdoms.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is perhaps the greatest Chinese novel, written in the 14th century. It's based partially on historical fact - when the Han Dynasty fell apart and split into three different kingdoms. The two men in the clip, Liu Bei and Cao Cao, would end up ruling their own different kingdoms and would fight in one of the largest battles in Chinese history - the Battle of the Red Cliffs (赤壁之战) where Cao Cao's ~200,000 men were defeated by a much smaller force of ~50,000, partially headed by Liu Bei.
In the clip, the two are still allies - Cao Cao is asking Liu Bei to join an alliance against the tyrant Dong Zhuo who had effectively captured the last Han emperor (a child), and their philosophical debate helps inspire long-held lessons in statecraft that persist to this day.
1- Order vs chaos
A prevailing theme of Three Kingdoms is order vs. chaos. Cao Cao is the embodiment of chaos - he is depicted as murdering family members who had taken him in after he is caught trying to kill Dong Zhuo. Cao Cao is traditionally painted as the villain and the heel in Three Kingdoms, while Liu Bei is often painted as the virtuous example of a Chinese "gentleman". Yet we know the historical figure Cao Cao was a capable administrator who came closest to reunifying the Han dynasty after its ruinous fall - but at what cost?
My personal sympathies lie with Liu Bei - this is the way the story is built, and in stories, you need heroes and villains. Yet, while filled with sin, Cao Cao's seductive siren song that to "make order from chaos" would make heroes of them both throughout the ages rings true - and is in fact true when one considers that the greatest Chinese novel is not about peacetime administration, but rather the "romance" of warfare and rivalry - for which we remember Liu Bei and Cao Cao even today.
2- Laws vs morals
As a roughly similar thread, Liu Bei and Cao Cao also represent two great schools of Chinese philosophy: Confucianism and Legalism. Liu Bei finds the root of the current chaos in the fact that the people have lost "faith and principles" while Cao Cao talks about "turning chaos to order".
A rough approximation of the underlying debate is that Confucians seek to set moral example, while Legalists seek to enforce laws. This is similar to the debate lines between Hobbes' Leviathan and his view of pre-state humanity as brutish and violent and Rousseau's idealistic view. Legalists demand a strong state, while Confucians demand a strong people. The two can be at loggerheads with tactics and synthetic in the same goals: a thriving civilization.
Yet, it's the conflict between the two that has often marked Chinese history - as recently as when Mao compared himself favorably to the first Legalist Emperor Qin Shi Huang ("He buried 460 scholars alive - we have buried 46,000 scholars alive.") while ordering his Red Guards to desecrate the tomb of Confucius during the Cultural Revolution.
3- The lords seek spoils, not change
Liu Bei makes the most insightful observation - that the alliance of Lords trying to depose Dong Zhuo are in fact, not looking to save the people, but rather to carry on ruling like Dong Zhuo has. They are "looking to divide everything under Heaven." - more jealous than reformist. In this respect, Three Kingdoms is an ample reminder of changing labels but not changing the underlying power structure after revolutions - which finds purchase in Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q or perhaps closer to home for many in Nostr, George Orwell's Animal Farm and the uniparty.
4- The people suffer from ambition
While we see two men debating their ambitions - Cao Cao looking for "eternal fame and glory", Liu Bei looking to preserve the Han Dynasty, their words carry unimaginable power because of the impact their ideas would have on millions of people. A famous poem was written around the same time as the events depicted in Three Kingdoms - "At Fifteen I Joined the Army on Expedition" (
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:At_Fifteen_I_Joined_the_Army_on_Expedition). The poem ends after a veteran of the war-torn Three Kingdoms period - the same period that did indeed elevate Liu Bei and Cao Cao to "eternal fame and glory" - observes that he's been at war for 65 years and finds that nobody is left in his household.
"Meal and broth are ready in an instant,
But I know not whom to serve.
As I step out and look east,
Falling tears soak my clothes."
A poem that resonated for the millions it took, in blood, to elevate the Three Kingdoms into the novel it is today.
https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=dk9MzFD9T-Q
