The Halberd at Red Cliff by Tian Xiao Fei (2018) is an excellent addition to my library of literature on The Three Kingdoms.
Tian is a professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University.
Tian was 47 years old when she wrote the book in English. Born in Harbin in 1971, she became a tenured professor at Harvard at age 34 in 2006.
Her book is a gem that explores the explosion of poems during the Jian’an period, which is essentially the same period as the Three Kingdoms.
Tian has set out these poems with their original Chinese text side by side with the English translations.
The title of her book is The Halberd at Red Cliff.
If you recall, the movie Red Cliff (2008) by John Woo featured a rusty halberd emerging out of the mist, paying homage to a famous Tang poem.
The halberd was referred to in a famous poem by the Tang poet Du Mu titled Red Cliff.
Red Cliff
A broken halberd buried in sand, its iron not yet rusted away,
I pick it up, scrub and polish it, and recognize it’s from a former dynasty.
Had the east wind not aided Zhou Yu,
The Qiao sisters would have been locked away in the deep spring of the Bronze Sparrow Terrace.
The poem Red Cliff by Du Mu, a Tang poet, is a famous seven-character quatrain in Chinese. Although the English translation is beautiful, it is not in seven-character.
Du Mu is obviously very learned in the history of the Three Kingdoms.
In just a quatrain of 7 characters, he managed to compose a beautiful poem linking a halberd (a Chinese weapon famously used by Lu Bu) to the Eastern Han; the Battle of the Red Cliff; the east wind that unexpectedly blew the fire ships to Cao Cao’s ships, thereby destroying them; Master Zhou Yu, who was the general of the state of Wu; the Qiao sisters, who were legendary beauties respectively married to Zhou Yu and his lord, Sun Ce; and the Bronze Bird Terrace, whereby if the east wind had not blown, the Qiao sisters would have been captured and placed on the Bronze Bird Terrace.
According to Cao Cao’s will, his concubines and female entertainers were to be kept on the Bronze Bird Terrace after his death to entertain him in the afterlife.
P.S. Lu Bu uses the halberd. Guan Yu uses a crescent blade mounted at the end of a long pole. Zhang Fei uses a spear with jagged edges shaped like a serpent. Liu Bei uses the twin swords.