Xue Rengui - in Fiction

In Fiction

Xue Rengui's life was dramatized in a number of fictional works. The most prominent of these works were the play Xue Rengui's Glorious Return Home (薛仁貴衣錦歸鄉), by the Yuan Dynasty playwright Zhang Guobin (張國賓) and an anonymous novel from Qing Dynasty, Xue Rengui's Campaign to the East (薛仁貴征東). Xue Rengui's tenure as General of Andong Protectorate following the fall of Goguryeo has been dramatized in a popular Korean television series called Dae JoYoung, and portrays Xue Rengui as a Tang general who's constantly frustrated by the insurgency of the Dongmyeongchun League; remnants of the Goguryean underground resistance against the Tang. According to this television action-drama broadcasted worldwide on KBS-1, Xue Rengui could finally claim victory over the Goguryean insurgency when he had Dae Joyoung and his legion of escaped Baekje, Goguryean, Khitan, and Sillian prisoners cornered, and had Dae Joyoung vow loyalty to the Tang Empire, and become a military officer of high-rank in the Tang army. However, Xue Rengui is to lose Dae Joyoung again following a stratagem in which Dae Joyoung volunteers to lead a punitive force of Tang soldiers against nomadic bandits in Mount Madu to recover stolen Tang money. While Dae Joyoung successfully recovers the gold and silver taels and convinces the bandits to fight another group of the Tang punitive force led by the evil Tang general Li Wen, he dispatches the stolen property back to Chang'an alongside his close Dongmyeongchun League confidant Mimosa and a small group of Tang soldiers, Dae Joyoung took the opportunity escape the Tang to return to his Goguryean land on the true-pretext that general Li Wen was going to attack kill him and his Goguryean subordinates. This television series also portrays Xue Rengui travelling from Chang'an with only his friend and bodyguard Hongpei to the Khitan-held Yingzhou in order meet his old war protege the Khitan Khan Li Jinzhong to personally warn him about general Li Wen's desire to destroy the Khitans in the year 695; however, this is apparently a symbolic gesture made by the show's producers as General Xue Rengui died in 683, to indicate the good and friendly nature of General Xue Rengui and his disdain for political matters. A "ballad-narrative" (說晿詞話) known as "The story of Xue Rengui crossing the sea and Pacifying Liao" (薛仁貴跨海征遼故事), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui is believed to been written in the Suzhou dialect of Wu.