When I read Water Margin (《水浒传》) as a kid, what I saw were swift vengeance and “acting on behalf of Heaven.” The 108 heroes of Liangshan each had their own skills, drinking from big bowls and eating big chunks of meat—it was just so satisfying. It wasn’t until I recently reread the People’s Literature Publishing House edition of Water Margin, and then read Yashalong’s Understanding Water Margin (《读懂水浒》), that I realized the book I’d read all those years was a fake Water Margin. There aren’t many real heroes in this book—there are only ordinary people swept up by fate, a portrait of the masses struggling to survive in a chaotic world.
Lin Chong: Every One of Us Is Lin Chong
Yashalong says Lin Chong is a “50% man”—50% emotion, 50% morality, and 50% in everything he does.
That assessment is far too precise. Lin Chong isn’t hot-blooded like Lu Zhishen, nor ruthless like Wu Song. He’s just a middle-class man who wants to live a stable life: a decent job (instructor of the 800,000-strong Imperial Guard), a beautiful wife, and a nice house. He has a good relationship with his superior, Grand Marshal Gao, and they socialize from time to time. His life isn’t rich or noble, but it’s peaceful and serene.
But when Gao Yanei molests his wife, Lin Chong’s “hand goes soft first.” He stands on the stairs and calls for the door to be opened instead of kicking it in. Why? Because he’s too attached to this middle-class life. He isn’t willing to give up stability for dignity, or to face an unknown future.
Later, Grand Marshal Gao sets a trap and sends men to invite him to the mansion for a sword contest, and Lin Chong doesn’t suspect a thing. One step into the White Tiger Hall, and he’s branded and exiled to Cangzhou. Before leaving, he writes a divorce letter, letting his wife “remarry as she pleases”—ostensibly out of fear of ruining her prospects, but at bottom hoping she’ll just marry Gao Yanei so he can leave “with a settled heart.”
On that night at the Mountain Spirit Temple in the wind and snow, the snow falls thick and fast, the fodder field is burned, and Lin Chong is finally pushed to the end of his rope. Gun in hand, he heads for Liangshan Marsh. But even after he reaches Liangshan, Wang Lun, jealous of talent, refuses to take him in, and Lin Chong just endures it silently. It’s only when Wu Yong goads him into killing Wang Lun that he finally acts.
Reading this, my heart tightened. Isn’t this most of us?
We have morals, we aren’t bad-hearted, we treat people generously. But when face with pressure, we can retreat step by step. As long as the knife isn’t at our throat, we pretend that all is peaceful. Lin Chong’s tragedy isn’t that he’s too weak—it’s that he’s too much like us.
Lu Zhishen: The Rarest Thing in the World Is Kindness
If Lin Chong is warm water, then Lu Zhishen is a raging fire.
The Elder Zhizhen gives him a four-line verse: “Rise when you meet the Lin, grow rich when you meet the mountain, flourish when you meet the water, stop when you meet the river.” Later it all comes true—saving Lin Chong at Wild Boar Forest, taking to the hills at Twin Dragon Mountain, swearing brotherhood at Liangshan Marsh, and passing into nirvana at the tidal bore of the Qiantang River.
When Lu Zhishen first appears, he makes Li Zhong extremely uncomfortable. He’s warm as fire toward people he respects and utterly rude to people he doesn’t. This man acts purely on instinct, has no capacity for self-reflection, and is immensely powerful, so he inevitably does some bastardly things. Drunk at Mount Wutai, he knocks over a pavilion, smashes the guardian statues, and sends all the monks fleeing in disarray. But the kindness in his nature forms a bottom line that keeps him from ever going too far.
The Jin Cuilian affair: if Wu Song had come across it, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought; if Lin Chong had, he’d at most sigh and toss over a few taels of silver; if Song Jiang had, he’d first weigh whether it was worth helping. Only Lu Zhishen would be so angry he couldn’t even eat dinner—and then kill the Bully of Guanxi with three punches.
At Wagan Temple, seeing the old monks bullied by evil monks and Daoists, he steps in to save them even though he himself is starving. At Peach Blossom Village, when Squire Liu’s daughter is being forcibly taken by the Petty Tyrant Zhou Tong, Lu Zhishen crawls into the bridal tent and gives Zhou Tong a sound beating.
What moves me most is Lu Zhishen’s ending. At Liuhe Temple, hearing the tidal bore of the Qiantang River, he recalls Elder Zhizhen’s verse, bathes and changes clothes, sits on the meditation chair, burns a good stick of incense, crosses his legs, and departs in peace. The gatha he leaves behind:
All my life I have not cultivated good karma; I only love to kill and set fires. Suddenly the golden cangue springs open, and here the jade lock is snapped. Aha! The tide comes in on the Qiantang River; only today do I know that I am I.
Of all the characters in Liangshan, Lu Zhishen dies with the most composure. Because he lived his whole life most authentically, never pretending, never scheming.
Song Jiang: A Class Leap Doomed to Fail
Yashalong’s reading of Song Jiang completely overturns my understanding of “Timely Rain.”
The moment Song Jiang appears, the book says he “regards gold as dirt,” and in the martial world he’s known as “Timely Rain.” But here’s the problem: Song Jiang is nothing but a clerk, and Squire Song is just a rural rich man—where would so much money to throw around come from?
Even stranger: Song Jiang is already a boss feared throughout the underworld, yet he doesn’t know it himself. When he’s tied up at Qingfeng Mountain about to have his heart cut out, he inadvertently says “What a pity Song Jiang should die here,” and the men immediately kowtow to him. Song Jiang himself is shocked: I’m that famous?
What does this show? It shows that Song Jiang’s “righteousness in scattering wealth” is, in essence, an investment. He’s buying underworld reputation with money, and using that reputation as a bargaining chip to squeeze into high society.
His secret release of Chief Chao isn’t simple loyalty—it’s betting on both the black and the white sides. On the Xunyang Tower he writes a seditious poem, “If in time my soaring ambition is fulfilled, I’ll dare to laugh at Huang Chao as no true man”—exposing his true inner ambition. Meeting the Nine Heavens Mystic Maiden at Huandao Village, who grants him three volumes of heavenly books, only strengthens his conviction that he’s a person of destiny, “corresponding to a star in the heavens.”
But Song Jiang spends his whole life chasing that “noble world.” He resisted it, he challenged it, but in the end, he still revered it. Even when he’s given poisoned wine after the amnesty, he’s willing to die with the title “Grand Master of Military Virtue, Pacification Commissioner of Chuzhou and Commander-in-Chief of the Cavalry and Infantry.” That title is the final illusion of his squeezing into that world.
Reading this, I suddenly felt Song Jiang was pitiful. He spends a whole life chasing a dream—and in the end, even the dream is fake.
Wu Song: From Tiger-Slayer to Asura of Slaughter
Wu Song is the most legendary figure in Water Margin—slaying the tiger at Jingyang Ridge, beating Jiang the Door God while drunk, the bloodshed at Mandarin Duck Tower—every scene is breathtaking.
But read the original closely and you’ll find Wu Song’s trajectory of transformation is chilling. At first he’s a man who reasons things out: to avenge his brother, he first finds witnesses, then petitions the authorities, following proper procedure. Exiled to Mengzhou, when the two escorts treat him carefully all the way, he refuses to harm them—“If I harmed him, Heaven itself would not forgive me.”
But the ordeal at Feiyun Ferry changes him completely. Seeing the escorts exchange glances with a sword-bearer, he knows it’s a trap, so he strikes first, kicking one over with a flying foot. From then on, Wu Song’s murderous intent grows heavier and heavier. At the bloodshed at Mandarin Duck Tower, he kills Inspector Zhang, Training Officer Zhang, and Jiang the Door God—along with the groom, the maids, and the cook. On the wall he leaves the words: “The murderer is Wu Song, the Tiger-Slayer.”
At Cross Slope, meeting Zhang Qing and Sun Erniang, he could have killed them, but because of a few kind words he swears brotherhood with them instead. This shows Wu Song’s standard of good and evil is simple: whoever treats me well is good, whoever harms me deserves to die. He’s no hero acting on behalf of Heaven—he’s just an ordinary man whom the world pushed into becoming an Asura.
Wu Yong: A Vine Wrapped Around a Great Tree
Wu Yong really is highly intelligent. Outwitting the convoy for the birthday gifts, he robs Chancellor Liang of ten thousand strings of gold and jewels without spending a single soldier. In the three assaults on the Zhu Family Manor, he spots the martial-brother relationship between Sun Li and Luan Tingyu and offers a chain stratagem with collaboration from within. In strategy, he could crush Song Jiang.
But Wu Yong is always nothing more than “a vine wrapped around a great tree.” He can’t stand on his own; he can only attach himself to the strong. When Chao Gai is around, he attaches to Chao Gai; the moment Song Jiang comes up the mountain, he immediately switches to Song Jiang. When he lays his vicious schemes, he’s no less than Song Jiang—luring Lu Junyi up the mountain, ruining his family; forcing Zhu Tong into outlawry by ordering Li Kui to split the young magistrate in two.
Wu Yong’s tragedy is that he’s too clever—so clever that he can only ever be a strategist, never a lord.
Li Kui: A Beast Has a Beast’s Value
Li Kui is like a wild beast, and Song Jiang is like a beast-tamer.
At the rescue of the execution ground in Jiangzhou, Li Kui “asks not whether officer or commoner—he kills until corpses lie across the fields and blood flows in channels.” Chao Gai shouts from behind, “This has nothing to do with the common people, stop the killing!” but Li Kui won’t listen—“one axe, one head, mowing them down in a row.”
Some say theirs is a master-and-slave relationship, but it isn’t. If it were, Li Kui wouldn’t have taken up his axe to split Song Jiang open. Theirs is exactly the relationship of beast-tamer and beast—trained the right way, the beast can be more obedient than the most loyal servant, but at bottom, it’s still a beast.
Liangshan needs the apricot-yellow banner of “acting on behalf of Heaven,” and it also needs people like Li Kui to manufacture terror. Love draws people together; terror makes them obey.
What’s more terrifying is that Li Kui isn’t just a beast tamed by Song Jiang—he’s also the dark other side of Song Jiang. The things Song Jiang can’t conveniently say, the things he can’t conveniently do, Li Kui does for him. When the Xunyang River runs red with blood, Song Jiang says not a word. Why? Because the cunning brain has decided to let the dark heart run wild for a while.
Yan Qing and Li Jun: The Truly Clever Ones
Most of the Liangshan heroes meet wretched ends. But two fare best: Yan Qing and Li Jun.
Returning from the campaign against Fang La, Yan Qing urges Lu Junyi to “return the official patents you received and quietly go into hiding under a false name.” Lu Junyi doesn’t believe him: “I never harbored the slightest disloyalty—how could the court betray me?” Yan Qing laughs: “You’re mistaken, master. My going away will have a result; I fear your staying will have none.”
Yan Qing saw through everything. He knew the amnesty wasn’t the end but the beginning of another round of slaughter. So he took up a load of gold and jewels and vanished to an unknown place. It’s the clearest-headed farewell in the whole book.
Li Jun is even sharper. Feigning a stroke, he leaves Tong Wei and Tong Meng behind, builds ships with Fei Bao and the others, and sails out from Taicang Harbor—later becoming the king of Siam. From a hero of the martial world to the ruler of a nation—that is true “flourishing when you meet the water.”
In Closing
When Jin Shengtan annotated Water Margin, he called it a “book of rage.” But when Yashalong read Water Margin, what he saw was the complexity and truth of human nature.
Lin Chong’s cowardice, Lu Zhishen’s kindness, Song Jiang’s obsession, Wu Song’s ruthlessness, Wu Yong’s cunning, Li Kui’s brutality, Yan Qing’s clarity—none of these are stereotyped heroes; they are ordinary people of flesh and blood. Some are crushed by their times, some lose their way in the chaos, some hold on to the last bottom line, and some see through the ending early on.
Rereading Water Margin, I finally understand: heroes are just ordinary people, and ordinary people are the truest heroes in this world.
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