In Popular Culture
In contemporary China, Wu has often been regarded as a traitor and opportunist, due to his betrayal of both the Ming and Qing dynasties. This view has been promoted by those who have an interest in a strongly unified China directed from the Beijing headquarters. However more sympathetic characterisations are sometimes voiced, however, and it is clear that Wu's romance with and love for his concubine Chen Yuanyuan remains one of the classic love stories in Chinese history.
Wu's early life and military career are portrayed in a more positive light in the CCTV television series Jiangshan Fengyu Qing, in which he is shown to be forced into making the fateful decisions which have made him famous.
Wuxia writer Louis Cha's novel The Deer and the Cauldron (鹿鼎記) portrays Wu as a powerful nemesis to the Kangxi Emperor, who sends the protagonist of the novel, Wei Xiaobao, to scout out Wu's forces in Yunnan.
Read more about this topic: Wu Sangui
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The highest end of government is the culture of men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)