Sanguozhi Pinghua

Sanguozhi Pinghua (simplified Chinese: 三国志平话; traditional Chinese: 三國志平話; pinyin: Sānguózhì Pínghuà), or Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language, published anonymously in the Yuan dynasty, sometime between 1321 and 1323.

The novel was translated into English for the first time in 2016 by Wilt Idema and Stephen H. West.

In the Introduction, aimed at the non-specialist, they explain that there had been a group of tales and legends on the events of Three Kingdoms period, define the pinghua form, and call this novel a "fast-paced tale" that was to remain the most popular account of the legends for the next two centuries.

It was printed, they explain, in a series that included other historical titles.

[2] The scholar Yoo Min-hyung puts the novel in the tradition of oral storytellers who did not read a text aloud but added improvisations to well-known incidents, though classifying this pinghua as a novel, not a script.