ABSTRACT
To think of SHUI-HU CHUAN (THE WATER MARGIN) is, according to some critics, to think of a picture gallery of twelfth-century China, the late Sung Dynasty. That is to say, that the work abounds in realistic characters and atmosphere, in a social, political and economic milieu marking a declining dynasty shot through with weakness and corruption and increasingly vulnerable to invading Mongols. The intruders would, in the end, as the Yuan Dynasty, control all China, South as well as North.
