Granary Officer as Scapegoat
Chapters 17-19
It was hard to choose what to write about in these chapters. There's a lot of good stuff!
My favorite episode features Cao Cao, as he must face down what to do about his troops’ hunger. He orders the Granary Officer Wang Hou to give his troops smaller portions. (p. 294) Then Cao Cao tells Wang Hou that even though Wang has done nothing wrong, Cao Cao will fabricate a scandal about how the Granary Officer corruptly stole from their food rations. Cao Cao says he needs to execute Wang Hou to improve morale, and swears he’ll take care of his family after he kills him. After the execution, Cao Cao increases rations temporarily, improving morale. The scheme works!
There is also a continuation of last week’s theme: a great warrior must not become too attached to women, or he will be trapped by them. That’s what finally kills Lu Bu: he can’t risk any harm to his wife, daughter, or consort (Diaochan). His choices are put in stark contrast with an episode with Liu Bei. While in peril, Liu Bei meets a hunter who wants to help him. Since the hunter doesn’t have any meat, he butchers his own wife and feeds the "meat" to Liu Bei, telling him that it is wolf meat. (p. 313) When Cao Cao and Liu Bei find out the truth later, they approve of the hunter’s sacrifice. I don’t know, seems pretty brutal to me!
Liu Bei isn’t the only one eating human flesh in these chapters. We see one of Cao Cao’s generals, Xiahou Dun, get shot in the eye with an arrow. Rather than allow “the essence of [his] parents to be thrown away,” Xiahou Dun swallows the eye himself. (p. 310) Again, pretty intense!
There is another extreme act that is not described as such. When Cao Cao lays siege to Lu Bu, he diverts a river to cut off Lu Bu’s water supply. (p. 324) I remember in World War II, some of the greatest disasters that befell China were dams that were destroyed, flooding and killing many people (see Forgotten Ally; if I recall correctly, it was the Chinese who destroyed the dams to help evade a pursuing Japanese army, and the civilian casualties were so great that they surpassed all the other civilian casualties inflicted by the Japanese). Here, the flooding is mentioned as a simple and effective tactic. If civilians were injured by it, we don’t learn one way or the other.
One last mention for the week for those tracking Magic cards: Lu Bu’s horse, Red Hare, is captured shortly before Lu Bu’s death. It is given to Cao Cao as a gift (p. 326). Red Hare is the subject of a Magic: the Gathering card, “Riding Red Hare”. He had appeared earlier, but I forgot to mention it. And the horse will return later in the novel.